St Michael's Church Hamburg

The Michel, as Hamburg calls it, has been destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly: lightning burned it in 1750, a roofer's blowtorch set it alight in 1906 and it burned out completely, and bombing wrecked it again in 1945. The present building follows the eighteenth-century design. Its tower, 132 metres, carries the largest tower clock in Germany with faces of eight metres across and was long used as a landmark by ships coming up the Elbe. A platform at 106 metres is reached by lift or stairs. Johannes Brahms and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach are connected with the church, and Bach is buried in the crypt.

History

St Michael's began around 1600 as a cemetery chapel outside Hamburg's walls, so small that people in the churchyard heard sermons through the open windows; the first church was built from 1647 to 1669 for the new town laid out inside the new walls, and in 1685 it became the fifth main church, until lightning destroyed it on March 10, 1750. The second church, designed by Johann Leonhard Prey and Ernst Georg Sonnin, was begun in 1751 and inaugurated in 1762 with an oratorio by Telemann, and in 1802 the astronomer Johann Benzenberg dropped metal balls 76.3 m inside its tower to show the Earth's rotation, half a century before Foucault. Johannes Brahms was baptised here on May 26, 1833, and on July 3, 1906 a fire started by soldering work on the tower burned the church out; the Senate decided the next day to rebuild it (Wikipedia, St. Michael's Church, Hamburg).

What's there

• The tower platform - a viewing level at 106 metres over the harbour.
• The tower clock - the largest in Germany, with eight-metre faces.
• The white interior - a baroque preaching church rebuilt after 1906 and 1945.
• The crypt - burials including Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

When to go

Year-round; the tower closes in storms and during services, and there is a daily trumpet call from the platform. The crypt has separate opening.

What to expect

The church closes to visitors during services and concerts. Tower and crypt are separately ticketed. It is a reconstruction, not original fabric.

Nearby

The harbour lies south; the Speicherstadt is east.

Key facts