Europe's largest inner-city urban development, built since 2000 on 157 hectares of former dockland just south of Hamburg's old town. The Speicherstadt — a UNESCO-listed district of red-brick warehouse buildings from the 1880s — forms the northern edge; new residential towers, offices, the Elbphilharmonie concert hall, the International Maritime Museum and the Überseequartier shopping district fill the rest.
Architecturally it's a mixed bag: the Elbphilharmonie is genuinely extraordinary, the surrounding blocks less so. But it's worth walking through to see how a working industrial port gets turned into a new city quarter. The U4 metro line runs out to the eastern end, making it easy to reach from the centre.