Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"The Hamburg Rathaus is the Rathaus—the city hall or town hall—of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany. It is the seat of the government of Hamburg and as such, the seat of one of Germany's 16 state parliaments. The Rathaus is located in the Altstadt quarter in the city center, near the lake Binnenalster and the central station. Constructed from 1886 to 1897, the city hall still houses its original governmental functions with the office of the First Mayor of Hamburg and the meeting rooms for Hamburg's parliament and senate (the city's executive).
History
Floor of the parliament in 1897.
After the old city hall was destroyed in the great fire of 1842, it took almost 44 years to build a new one. The present building was designed by a group of seven architects, led by Martin Haller. Construction started in 1886 and the new city hall was inaugurated in 1897. Its cost was 11 million German gold marks, about €80 million. On October 26, 1897 at the official opening ceremony the First Mayor Dr. Johannes Versmann received the key of the city hall.
In the postwar period, various heads of state visited Hamburg and its City Hall — among them Emperor Haile Selassie I, the Shahanshah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1955, and in 1965 Queen Elizabeth II. An emotionally moving service of remembrance was held on the market-square for the victims of the North Sea flood of 1962. Happier moments were the celebrations of the German football champions Hamburger SV.
In 1971 a room in the tower was only discovered accidentally during a search for a document fallen behind a filing cabinet. So there is a probability that there are even more rooms than the currently counted 647 rooms."
As for the book, Good Reads (
visit link) informs us (as translated by Google):
"Hamburg: From City Hall to the Old Exchange (VIADAVINCI-City Tours) (German Edition)
by Nicole Boysen, Julia Graupner (Illustrator)
12:00 · rating details · 0 ratings · 0 reviews
Dear reader,
our city walk from City Hall to the Old Stock Exchange (now Commerce) continues along the interface between old and new. We are witnessing a modern department store architecture at Neuer Wall and Grosse Bleichen and ancient sites such as hops market, Nikolai Church and Trostbrücke. The distance is less than 2 km. We describe clearly and briefly buildings, places, events and people that are associated with our walk. If you take about two hours, enough leisure stays, once to stay longer in one place and to experience the atmosphere. For example, the hop market with the Nikolai Church and the underlying Trostbrücke.
Here, on Nikolaifleet, was formerly the Port of Hamburg. Ewer and barges brought the goods of the sailing ships that went to the same anchor: tea, coffee and spices from distant countries, cloth from England or vegetables from the Vierlanden were discharged. Here there was a lot of activity with sailors, merchants, brewers and fishermen, carriages, cranes and horse-drawn carts.
Enjoy the end of the tour, the rest in the courtyard of the beautiful town hall with Hygieia fountain and watch the swans of Little Alster or the barges that pass through the town hall lock."