Donner & Reuschel

The Thalia Theater is one of the three state-owned theatres in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded in 1843 by Charles Maurice Schwartzenberger and named after the muse Thalia. Today, it is home to one of Germany's most famous ensembles and stages around 9 new plays per season. Current theatre manager is Joachim Lux, who in 2009/10 succeeded Ulrich Khuon. In addition to its main building, located in the street Raboisen in the Altstadt quarter near the Binnenalster and Gerhart-Hauptmann-Platz in Hamburg's inner city, the theatre operates a smaller stage, used for experimental plays, the Thalia in der Gaußstraße, located in the borough of Altona.

Europa Passage is a large shopping mall in the Altstadt quarter of Hamburg, Germany, located between the streets of Ballindamm/Jungfernstieg and Mönckebergstraße near the lake of Binnenalster. It was opened on 5 October 2006. Within the 5-level mall 125 shops and 27 catering outlets can be found on an overall length of around 160 metres and a space of 30,000 square metres. Another 30,000 square metres of office space are located within the building. The total investment cost of the building amounted to 430 million Euro. The building is operated by ECE Projektmanagement and owned by Alida Grundstücksgesellschaft GmbH & Co KG (Alida Real Estate Company). The passage was designed by Hadi Teherani of BRT Architects.

The Ballindamm is an inner city boulevard of Hamburg, Germany. Located within the Altstadt quarter directly at the Binnenalster, the Ballindamm represents the connection between Jungfernstieg and Glockengießerwall. It is thus located in the heart of the city. Today, it is a four-lane alley with parking spaces on its median strip.

Saint Peter's Church (German: Hauptkirche St. Petri, German coll.: Petrikirche) in Hamburg, Germany stands on the site of many former cathedrals. Built by order of Pope Leo X, it has been a Protestant cathedral since the Reformation and its congregation forms part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany.

The Mönckebergstraße (locally also called Mö) is one of the main shopping streets in Hamburg, Germany. Mönckebergstraße is located in Hamburg-Altstadt, running some 800 m in east-west-direction between the Hauptbahnhof at Steintorwall and the Rathaus at Rathausmarkt. It is named after Johann Georg Mönckeberg, mayor of Hamburg in the 1890s and 1900s. On the south side, Mönckebergstraße passes the churches of St. Petri and St. Jacobi. Halfway in between, at Gerhart-Hauptmann-Platz, Mönckebergstraße intersects with Spitalerstraße, another important shopping street. Notable attractions of this prominent four-way-fork-junction are the Mönckebergbrunnen (Mönckeberg-Fountain) and a former central building of Hamburg public libraries, later had been a Burger King restaurant for many years, now a Starbucks subsidiary inside a coffeehouse called Elbphilharmonie Kulturcafé. Many major retailers such as H&M, Kaufhof, Karstadt, Karstadt Sport, Peek & Cloppenburg, Saturn or Zara have a presence on Mönckebergstraße. Many of the department stores have been converted from former kontor-houses. Some houses were demolished for the construction of Europa Passage in 2003. The shopping mall, which leads to the Jungfernstieg boulevard, opened in 2006.

Radio Hamburg is a private commercial radio station set up in the 1980s to play the big hits of the times. Nowadays it plays hits from the 2000s onwards, on high rotation. Their slogan is "Mehr Musik, mehr Vielfalt“ (Translation: More music, more diversity). Its services also include reports on news, weather and traffic which follow along every hour. Its website also has a live web stream. Since August 2008, Radio Hamburg is broadcast from the Semperhaus in Hamburg. In the Semperhause are also other stations of the RTL-group like Hamburg Zwei.

The Bishop's Tower (German: Bischofsturm), or Bishop's Castle (Bischofsburg), is an archaeological site in the historic city center of Hamburg, Germany, containing the oldest known remains of a stone building in the city. The site includes the foundations of a circular tower and a well, originally believed to represent the 11th-century stone residence of Archbishop Adalbrand of Bremen. Later finds, however, disproved this theory and it is now considered to be part of a 12th-century defensive structure.

Gerhart-Hauptmann-Platz (Gerhart Hauptmann Square) is a central square in Altstadt quarter, Hamburg, Germany. The former Pferdemarkt (Horse Market) is located at the junction of the streets of Mönckebergstraße, Spitalerstraße and Alstertor. The southern part of the square was renamed into Ida-Ehre-Platz (Ida Ehre Square) on 9 July 2000, in honour of the actress and intendant of Hamburger Kammerspiele.

Binnenalster (pronounced [ˈbɪnənˌʔalstɐ] (listen)) or Inner Alster Lake is one of two artificial lakes within the city limits of Hamburg, Germany, which are formed by the river Alster (the other being the Außenalster). The main annual festival is the Alstervergnügen. The lake has an area of 0.2 square kilometres (0.077 sq mi).

The Great fire of Hamburg began early on May 5, 1842, in Deichstraße and burned until the morning of May 8, destroying about one third of the buildings in the Altstadt. It killed 51 people and destroyed 1,700 residences and several important public buildings, necessitating major civic rebuilding and prompting infrastructure improvements. The heavy demand on insurance companies led to the establishment of reinsurance.

Hamburg-Mitte (Hamburg Central) is one of the seven boroughs of Hamburg, Germany, covering most of the city's urban center. The quarters of Hamburg-Altstadt and Neustadt cover much of the city's historic core. In 2020 the population was 301,231.

The Allied bombing of Hamburg during World War II included numerous attacks on civilians and civic infrastructure. As a large city and industrial centre, Hamburg's shipyards, U-boat pens, and the Hamburg-Harburg area oil refineries were attacked throughout the war.As part of a sustained campaign of strategic bombing during World War II, the attack during the last week of July 1943, code named Operation Gomorrah, created one of the largest firestorms raised by the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces in World War II, killing an estimated 37,000 people in Hamburg, wounding 180,000 more, and destroying 60% of the city's houses.Hamburg was selected as a target because it was considered particularly susceptible to attack with incendiaries, which, from the experience of the Blitz, were known to inflict more damage than just high explosive bombs. Hamburg also contained a high number of targets supporting the German war effort and was relatively easy for navigators to find. Careful research was done on behalf of both the RAF and USAAF to discover the optimum mix of high explosives and incendiaries. Before the development of the firestorm in Hamburg, there had been no rain for some time and everything was very dry. The unusually warm weather and good conditions ensured that the bombing was highly concentrated around the intended targets, and helped the resulting conflagration create a vortex and whirling updraft of super-heated air which became a 460-metre-high (1,510 ft) tornado of fire. Various other previously used techniques and devices were instrumental as well, such as area bombing, Pathfinders, and H2S radar, which came together to work with particular effectiveness. An early form of chaff, code named 'Window', was successfully used for the first time by the RAF – clouds of aluminium foil strips dropped by Pathfinders as well as the initial bomber stream – in order to completely cloud German radar. The raids inflicted severe damage to German armaments production in Hamburg.