Speicherstadt and the adjacent Kontorhaus district are two densely built urban areas in the centre of the port city of Hamburg. Speicherstadt was originally developed on a group of narrow islands in the Elbe River between 1885 and 1927. It is one of the largest coherent historic ensembles of port warehouses in the world (300.000 sqm). It includes 15 very large warehouse blocks as well as six ancillary buildings and a connecting network of short canals. Adjacent to the modernist Chilehaus office building, the Kontorhaus district is an area of over five hectares featuring six very large office complexes
built from the 1920s to the 1940s to house port-related businesses. The complex exemplifies the effects of the rapid growth in international trade in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
UNESCO has appointed Hamburg`s Speicherstadt and Kontorhausviertel to World Heritage Site.
The World Heritage Committee decided the admission at their meeting in Bonn last Sunday.
It is the first World Heritage Site for Hamburg, thereby there are 40 cultural and natural
monuments in Germany on the Unesco World Heritage List. Worldwide there are over a thousand.
The Speicherstadt and Kontorhausviertel are already one of the tourist highlights in Hamburg.
The appointment to World Heritage site will contribute to a considerable extent to the international publicity of Hamburg.