The spice boxes
Opened and smelled rather than viewed behind glass.
Gulp โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท dbking from Washington, DC โ CC BY 2.0
Yes, with the right expectations: it is a very small museum, simple in presentation, and one hour covers it completely. Its value lies in the sensory experience and in being a continuation of the building's function, not in the depth of the exhibits. The price is low and its Speicherstadt location falls on any walking route through the district, so the real cost of a visit is very small.
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The Spice Museum in the Speicherstadt is the only museum in the world devoted to spices, and it sits in a brick warehouse where exactly this kind of cargo was genuinely stored โ so the location is not arbitrary but a continuation of the building's original function. The collection holds over nine hundred objects covering centuries of the spice trade: grinding, sorting and packing machines, sacks, measures and scales, and shipping documents. Hamburg was among Europe's most important spice ports, so the museum tells a local history as much as a global one. But what genuinely distinguishes it is that it is a museum to be smelled and touched: some fifty kinds of spice are displayed open in wooden boxes, and visitors are expressly asked to open them, handle the contents and smell them. That makes it among the most successful small museums with children, and the smell of the place is itself an unforgettable experience.
Opened and smelled rather than viewed behind glass.
Grinding, sorting and packing from the port era.
Am Sandtorkai 34, 20457 Hamburg