Sugar and spice and not-so-nice girls

Located on the Elbe River, Germany’s richest city traces its wealth to its port, the second-largest in Europe after Rotterdam’s. The workplace of merchant marines is a major attraction, as is the area where they unwind between jobs: the red-light district.

Also anchoring themselves in Hamburg are the fashion and media industries, which make for a population as worldly as the international seamen. The locals’ buttoned-up, North German manner keeps in check the sailor-town sleaze, mostly contained within the 600 metres of the Reeperbahn strip in St Pauli.

What really makes the world go round – goods such as coffee, tobacco and computers – is stored custom-free in the turreted warehouses of the free port. An hour-long harbour tour passes by monster cranes, hulking freighters and usually the Speicherstadt, a 16-kilometre warehouse district. An English-language tour leaves daily at noon from the Landungsbrücken (Brücke 1, +4940313607). If you’re awake between 5.30am and 10.30am on Sunday, check out the Altona Fischmarkt (Landungsbrücken) where vendors hawk antiques and miscellaneous junk, as well as fish.

On the Alster Lakes you can spy on millionaires’ mansions from a rowing boat or passenger boat (at the Jungfernstieg). The canals between the twin lakes and harbour have necessitated more bridges than Venice and Amsterdam combined. During the summer, the Planten un Blomen park hosts Japanese tea ceremonies and at 10pm nightly an illuminated fountain show. Swans hang out near the neo-Renaissance Rathaus (Rathausplatz, +4940428310), which brags it has six more rooms than Buckingham palace.

The most important church in Hamburg is the baroque St Michaelis, at the end of the Krayenkamp alley. It dates to the 17th century but has been rebuilt three times. The tower’s platform provides a great view. South-east of the church is Deichstrasse, with houses that date from the 17th to the 19th centuries.

Art has its strip on the Art Mile (Kunstmeile), where museums hold heady delights from old masters to pop art. Galleries and museums stretch between the main train station and Deichtorstrasse to the south near the Elbe River. Most important is the Kunsthalle (Glockengiesserwall, +4940428131200, www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de), with major artworks from medieval to modern – its Galerie der Gegenwart has a superb contemporary collection. The Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe (Steintorplatz, +4940428542732, www.mkg-hamburg.de) has a diverse applied arts collection of furnishings, graphic design and photography.