After being blown away by the size and scale (in every sense) of Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg we headed off to check off something with a little bit of history attached to it. Sometimes that means a museum, but on this occasion it would be a church with a particular feature that made it attractive to us.
First, though, we had to stroll through some of Hamburg’s streets and over some of the very many bridges spanning the canals running through the city. The water level in areas was incredibly low, exposing mud and beached boats, but we could easily see similarities between Hamburg and other canal-heavy cities with medieval trading connections such as Ghent even if the general overcast conditions didn’t lend the German scenes quite the pretty look of their Belgian counterparts.
The church we visited was St Michael’s Church but you knew that already what with you being a smart person who reads post titles.
The 132-metres high church has long been an important landmark in the city with vessels using it as an aid for navigation but its architecture and history are important too and make it one of the city’s most famous churches (and Hamburg has a few churches) and also its largest. St Michael’s was originally built in the latter half of the seventeenth century and it was the first church to be built specifically for the Protestants rather than simply appropriating formerly Catholic places of worship. The style is baroque and it has a prominent copper-covered spire.
You’ll have noticed the phrase originally built in the previous paragraph and you’ll probably know that old buildings have a tendency to suffer damage, often of the burning kind. In 1750 the church was struck by lightning and was destroyed. The second church suffered destruction again following a fire started during construction work in 1906. The third church was heavily damaged during World War II, as you’d expect, but wasn’t completely destroyed for a change so what you see nowadays is the restored version of that building, and it’s very nice indeed.
That particular feature about St Michael’s Church that attracted us was the fact that we could get up the tower and see over the cityscape of Hamburg. The ticket that grants you access to the tower allows you to choose between climbing the steps or taking the elevator. It’s a hundred metres up and there are no views along the way so we sensibly used the small but very modern elevator, and unless there’s a queue waiting to use it and you’re in a rush or unless you’re a masochist then I’d recommend you do too.
At the top of the St Michael’s Church tower we took in the great views we’d expected. On a sunny day it would probably look even more impressive but even with a thick cover of rain-threatening cloud we weren’t disappointed at the sight of Hamburg from high altitude. Naturally, we tried to locate our ship and the area from which we’d just come.
We finished our visit to St Michael’s Church with a look around the crypt. In more modern times it served as a shelter during Allied bombing on Hamburg in the war but, obviously, its main function was to house the dead and nearly two and a half thousand bodies are interred there. The grave chambers along the floor are up to four metres deep and built to hold up to four graves bodies stacked atop one another. Anyone with enough money could be buried below the church and the funds were used to finance the building of it. Amongst some notable final resting places is one of the sons of J.S. Bach. Within the surprisingly large space you can also see exhibits extracted from less well-preserved coffins during an opening and documentation of some in the twenty-first century.
No, I don’t have a clue why there’s a flashing child statue in the crypt of St Michael’s either.
St Michael’s Church interior is very typical of Lutheran style, being somewhat plain with lots of white surfaces, so it won’t win you over with wonder inside, but ascending to the tower and descending to the crypt make a visit to the church very worthwhile and we came away happy to have made a stop here.
In the next post in this Island Princess cruise travelogue series the weather will play a part in curtailing our tourist intentions so we’ll finish our time in Germany with a visit to a couple of bars because we absolutely couldn’t leave without saying we’d had some drinks in Hamburg.