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Anyone who turns up at the Fischmarkt (Hamburg Fish Market) in Altona early on a Sunday morning is either already up or still up.
In the summer months, up to 70,000 visitors regularly gather here to buy and sell – and even in winter, there are still 5,000 to 10,000.
Trading runs from 5:00 to 9:30 am, and from 7:00 am between 1 November and 31 March. Open-air stalls at the eastern end of Große Elbstraße in Altona draw in the crowds. Besides its commercial role, the market matters a great deal to Hamburg as a social meeting place for locals and, of course, for countless visitors – many tourists come to the city partly for the eccentric market criers. These loud, often comical traders are hugely entertaining for tourists. And who wouldn't want to have a piece of fish tossed their way to try?
And it's not just fish: fruit, sausages, crockery, houseplants and clothing also change hands here. Team Still-Up rolls in after a night out on the Reeperbahn to soothe their stomachs with soused herring rolls or Bismarck herring, while Team Already-Up – the early risers – do their shopping or start their Sunday with a morning drink to the sound of jazz, western or country music.
Lingovo, Schürbeker Straße 5, 22087 Hamburg
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The Fischmarkt looks back on a long tradition: fishermen and craftsmen had settled outside Hamburg's city gates as early as the 16th century. From 1703, trading was permitted on Sundays before church, so that residents could be supplied with fresh fish on Sundays too – at the time, there was no way of storing fresh fish for long.
For a time, the fish canning industry was also based here, making it the main hub for sea fish and canned fish, which were shipped on to supply Germany's inland regions.
The fish auction hall, built in the style of a three-aisled basilica, opened in 1896. Despite competition from the large steam trawlers that had since been developed, the auctions were needed to stop prices from being driven down. From the 1930s onwards, however, technical progress overtook the auction hall. Modern cold stores and fish processing plants were built further west, and today freshly caught fish is auctioned virtually.
The buildings on the market site changed again and again over the centuries. Most of the buildings around the Fischmarkt were destroyed by aerial bombing in 1943 during the Second World War. The City of Hamburg began reconstruction in the 1970s, which was carried out by the Bauverein der Elbgemeinden and the Altonaer Spar- und Bauverein between 1988 and 1992.
A Baroque fish market fountain stood here from 1742 to 1864. As part of the reconstruction, sculptor Hans Kock created a replacement for its damaged statue of Minerva in 1989. Next to the Fischmarkt stands stilwerk, a brick building that now houses a shopping centre for furniture and interior design, after the 19th-century malt house that once occupied it closed its doors.
Once a market day is over, the city's street cleaners move in, collecting the rubbish with special vehicles before sweepers clean the square. Late visitors who find anything edible or usable among the leftovers may take it with them – in normal household quantities – as long as they don't get in the way of the cleaning crews.
