Gängeviertel der Neustadt

The Gängeviertel is a cluster of twelve historic half-timbered houses that stand in sharp contrast to the surrounding glass and steel office towers of Hamburg’s Neustadt district. These structures are the final remnants of a vast, labyrinthine network of narrow alleys and cramped worker housing that once stretched from the harbor to the city center. Built primarily during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the original quarter became synonymous with extreme density and poor living conditions, eventually leading to mass demolition following a cholera epidemic in eighteen ninety-two.