Unspecified/General

In the heart of Hamburg, the Binnenalster, or Inner Alster, is the smaller of the two ornamental lakes formed when the River Alster was dammed for milling around the year 1250. The terms inner and outer refer to the city's long-gone medieval walls: the Binnenalster was the basin that lay inside them, while the much larger Aussenalster spreads out beyond, the two now separated by the Lombardsbruecke and Kennedybruecke bridges. Covering only about 0.2 square kilometres and nowhere much more than three metres deep, the Inner Alster is modest in size but central to the city's identity. Its most recognisable feature is the Alsterfontaene, a fountain installed in 1987 that jets water up to 60 metres high through the warmer months, a favourite backdrop for photographs against the grand facades of the Jungfernstieg promenade, the Rathaus and the surrounding banks, hotels and department stores. Swans have glided here for centuries, tended by a city swan-keeper, a post that has existed since 1674 and is still handed down within a single family; each autumn the birds are gathered and moved to sheltered winter quarters in a small Hamburg spectacle. The lake is fringed by elegant arcades and cafe terraces, and pleasure boats set off from the Jungfernstieg landing for trips that thread out onto the Aussenalster and through the network of canals that earned Hamburg its reputation for having more bridges than Venice. In the rare hard winters of the past, the water froze thick enough to hold an Alstereisvergnuegen, a festival on the ice, though warmer modern winters now make that a rarity. Each September the lake hosts the Alstervergnuegen street fair. For visitors the Binnenalster is less a destination to enter than a place to walk around, sit beside and photograph, an open, glittering centre that gives the bustling commercial city an unexpected sense of calm and space. In December the lake becomes the backdrop to a floating Christmas market with a fir tree set on a pontoon in the water. Boat tours, which run for much of the year, are the easiest way to appreciate it, gliding beneath the bridges and out onto the broader Aussenalster before threading the canals of the warehouse and merchant districts. Ringed by the city's most prestigious addresses and walkable in a leisurely loop, the Binnenalster is best enjoyed on foot from the Jungfernstieg, coffee in hand, watching the fountain, the swans and the city reflected in the water.

Type: Outdoors

Address: Hamburg, Germany