Whoever you feel closer to, Saint Anna or the African port, a short detour leads from here to a small monument that is as Hamburgish as Michel and Hans Hummel: the monument of Klaus Störtebeker. Although it is not actually located in Speicherstadt, but in HafenCity, it was originally located on Brooktor and was only converted to HafenCity in the course of work. As the city of Hamburg succinctly states, the heavy bronze statue by the sculptor Hansjörg Wagner embodies the unique case “in which a city erects a monument to its sworn enemy and an executed criminal”.

Nevertheless, Hamburg is immensely proud of its Likedeeler captain – so proud that a skull found in 1878 at the former Richtplatz on Grasbrook was unceremoniously passed off as Störtebeker’s and exhibited in the Museum of Hamburg History. When it was stolen from there under mysterious circumstances in 2010, the whole city was horrified. When he reappeared two years later under no less mysterious circumstances, the museum was so happy that it refused to admit him for two days.

Continued: Coffee Stock Exchange and Sandthorquaihof: in the slipstream of the tourist magnets