The roof platform
Wilhelmsburg and the port from 30 metres.
flamenc — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Gordon Leggett — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Yu Chu Chin — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Yu Chu Chin — CC BY-SA 4.0
Both are wartime flak towers, but this one's interior was destroyed in a 1947 demolition attempt, leaving an empty shell, while the St Pauli tower stayed intact inside. That difference determined their fates: the hollow core here allowed a vast thermal tank to be installed, whereas the St Pauli tower had storeys and a garden built on top. St Pauli is also central and far easier to reach.
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The Energy Bunker in Wilhelmsburg is another flak tower, from 1943, but its fate diverged entirely from the St Pauli tower's. The British attempted to demolish it in 1947 and destroyed the interior completely while the outer shell stayed standing — so it remained a hollow concrete husk, abandoned for over sixty years. In 2013 it reopened as a renewable energy plant: solar panels on the roof and southern face, a biomass boiler, and an enormous thermal water tank of several million litres storing heat inside the tower's hollow core. The facility supplies heat and electricity to thousands of nearby homes. On the roof there is a cafe and a viewing platform thirty metres up, looking over the island of Wilhelmsburg and Hamburg's port. The whole idea — a building raised for war now producing clean energy — is what makes it worth visiting, rather than the view alone.
Wilhelmsburg and the port from 30 metres.
Millions of litres inside the tower's core.
Neuhofer Strasse 7, 21107 Hamburg