Hamburg, one booking at a time.
Which harbour cruise actually goes into the warehouse canals. What the Elbphilharmonie plaza costs. Whether the St. Pauli walk is the one you think it is. Every tour in Hamburg, reviewed and ranked.
Ninety minutes on the Elbe, and the route decides everything.
All harbour cruises →
Every operator sells "a harbour tour" and they are not the same trip. The small boats turn off the river into the Speicherstadt canals; the big ones stay out on the Elbe and run the container terminals instead. Pick the one you actually want before you pay.
The warehouse run
The route travellers rate highest: out past the quays, then in under the bridges between the red-brick warehouses, where the big boats cannot follow.
The working-port run
Two hours of the third-busiest port in Europe: dry docks, the container berths at Waltershof and ships being turned by tugs while you eat lunch on deck.
The evening-lights run
The same water at night, when the Speicherstadt is lit from the water line and the cranes across the river are working under floodlights.
The harbour, the warehouses, the Kiez.
Hamburg is a working port that grew a city around itself, and almost everything worth booking sits on that axis — the water, the warehouse district, the concert hall built on top of one, and the loudest mile in Germany.
The Hamburg shortlist: water first, then everything else.
Every review →The bookings that anchor a first visit, in the order travellers have taken them. A cruise, the plaza, the bus that ties the two ends of the city together, and the walks worth the afternoon.
1
1.5-Hour Harbor and Speicherstadt Day Cruise
1.5-hour Hamburg harbor cruise with German live commentary, Speicherstadt warehouses, close container ships, plus Elbphilharmonie pier stop.
From · $40
Read our review →
2
90-Minute Evening Lights Harbor Cruise
from $27
3
2-Hour XXL Port of Hamburg Cruise Tour
from $47
4
Line A Sightseeing Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour
from $24
5
Elbphilharmonie Plaza Guided Tour
from $27
6
Hamburg Dungeon Admission Ticket
from $33
7
Insider Tour of the Reeperbahn & St. Pauli
from $29
8
1-Hour Harbor Evening Lights Cruise
from $30
The Speicherstadt is the reason Hamburg looks like Hamburg.
A whole district of red-brick warehouses on oak piles, built for coffee, tea, spices and carpets, and still standing over its own canals. Walk it, cruise it, or come back at night when the floodlights are on — and HafenCity, the new quarter grafted onto its edge, is the same walk a century later.
All 28 Speicherstadt and HafenCity tours →
Hamburg is cheaper than it looks.
Every tour on the site, sorted by what it actually costs. Most of this city is a cruise ticket and a walk, and the walks are the ones the reviews love.
Harbour cruises, walking tours, museum tickets and the pay-what-you-want walks — nearly everything Hamburg is famous for lives here.
Food and brewery tours, bike days, sailing on the Alster, and the combination tickets that put a bus and a boat on one pass.
- 1Schanzenviertel Culinary Tourfrom $57
- 2Elbphilharmonie Plaza and HafenCity Food Tourfrom $69
- 3Saturday Night Boat Partyfrom $116
Private guides and whole-boat charters, mostly priced per group — split four ways they land closer to the middle band than the number suggests.
St. Pauli is a neighbourhood before it is a night out.
The Reeperbahn is one mile long and carries a football club, a theatre row, the clubs where the Beatles learned to play, a Sunday fish market at the end of it and a working red-light quarter. Guides who live there walk all of it; what you book decides which version you get.
Insider Tour of the Reeperbahn & St. Pauli
Night Watchman’s Tour of St. Pauli in GermanIn the Footsteps of “Olivia” Reeperbahn TourSold as 18+ and listed separately: Adults-Only Reeperbahn Tours (18+)
Hamburg keeps three things to itself.
Plenty of cities have a river, a museum quarter and a night out. The working port, the two years that made the Beatles and the man who still walks the district with a horn belong to this one.
The Working Port
Hamburg is 100 km from the sea and still the third-busiest container port in Europe, because the Elbe is deep enough to bring ships to the middle of the city. That is why the sightseeing boats share the water with tugs and why the skyline is cranes. The best cruises do not hide it — they run you along the terminals and the dry docks and tell you what is being unloaded.
- 11.5-Hour Harbor and Speicherstadt Day Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 14,200 reviews
- 290-Minute Evening Lights Harbor Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 7,728 reviews
- 32-Hour XXL Port of Hamburg Cruise Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 6,979 reviews
The Beatles Apprenticeship
Five unknown teenagers from Liverpool came to the Große Freiheit in 1960 and played residencies of six and seven hours a night, first at the Indra, then the Kaiserkeller, then the Star-Club. They arrived a skiffle band and left able to hold a room. The clubs are mostly gone; the doorways, the corners and the stories are still standing, and the walks are led by people who can point at each one.
- 12.5-Hour Beatles Music Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 194 reviews
- 2Die Kiez-Kapitän Reeperbahn & Beatles Kieztour Hamburg★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 178 reviews
- 3The Beatles in Hamburg – Private Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 16 reviews
The Night Watchman
Hamburg burned in 1842 and again in 1943, and the job of walking the streets at night calling the hour outlasted both. The costumed watchman tours are the city telling its own crime and fire history back to itself, and they are the rare evening walk that suits a family. Several run in German only — check the language line before you book.
- 1Night Watchman’s Tour of St. Pauli in German★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 4,818 reviews
- 2Eerie Speicherstadt Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,394 reviews
- 3Crimes of St. Pauli Guided Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 265 reviews
What Hamburg does when it rains, which is often.
This is a North Sea port: it rains on roughly a third of the days in the year and the wind comes off the water sideways. Locals have a word for it and a plan for it. The plan is a roof — the Kunsthalle, a brewery cellar, a chocolate factory, a waxworks, a comedy club, or a boat with windows.
- 1Hamburg Dungeon Admission Ticketfrom $33
- 2Ticket to the Panoptikum Waxworksfrom $11
- 3Chocoversum Guided Tour with Tastingsfrom $37
In Hamburg you can decide what the tour was worth.
A handful of Hamburg guides work the pay-what-you-want model: you book a place for a token amount, you walk the old town or the harbour for two hours, and you settle up at the end for whatever you think it was worth. They are real guides on real routes, not a sales pitch with a walk attached.
Booked price shown; the rest is decided at the end of the walk.
All pay-what-you-want walks →By water and district — the harbour, the Alster and the Elbe are three different days
The Harbour36 tours
The Alster Lakes10 tours
Down the Elbe7 tours
Speicherstadt & HafenCity28 tours
Reeperbahn & St. Pauli58 tours
The Old Town14 tours
The Elbphilharmonie15 tours- Every list on the site →
By experience — what kind of day is it?
A first weekend in Hamburg, in order.
The Harbour
Speicherstadt
Elbphilharmonie
The Old Town
St. Pauli
BlankeneseThe newest Hamburg reviews.
All recent →
Hamburg Private Food Tours with a Local: 100% Personalized
Read our review →
Private Tour: Speicherstadt and HafenCity Walking Tour in Hamburg
Read our review →
Private Tour: Hamburg St Pauli Nightlife District
Read our review →
Hamburg Like a Local: Private and Personalized Experience (3hrs)
Read our review →
Airport Transfer: Hamburg Airport HAM to Hamburg by Business Car
Read our review →
In the Footsteps of The Beatles in Hamburg with a Local
Read our review →
private city tour of Hamburg’s UNESCO World Heritage Site
Read our review →
10 secrets of Hamburg’s old town – exciting scavenger hunt tour
Read our review →