Hamburg: Miniatur Wunderland, where tiny rules large
Above/featured: Miniature Hamburg with Heinrich Hertz tower at left, and Dammtor station at lower-centre.
Our family couldn’t afford the purchase of (or the space for) miniature railway sets. Christmas was a special time and with my nose pressed against shop windows, I’d dream of the world of the railroad set.
Hamburg’s Miniature Wonderland is big on wonder, has plenty of extensive miniature sets, and does not skimp on discoveries for people of all ages. Very little on the outside tells anybody passing by that there’s another world inside. Many aren’t fooled nor are they turned away. Miniature Wonderland was voted the most popular of 100 attractions in Germany in 2016, after 40-thousand international visitors were polled by the German National Tourist Board.
Built from 1883 to 1927, Hamburg’s Speicherstadt or Warehouse District was an important place in an increasingly busy port for the storage of dry goods from around the world. The Miniature Wonderland museum opened in the building called Block D on 16 August 2001. The historical Speicherstadt was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015.
Modelleisenbahn Wunderland (model railway wonderland); Block D, from street-level at Kehrwieder 2-4.
Museum highlights
- City-state of Hamburg
- Central station at dusk (video)
- Flughafen Knuffingen Airport
- Plane taxiing to terminal gate (video)
- Germany (Bavaria)
- Switzerland
- Scandinavia
- United States
- The fall of the Berlin Wall
Hamburg
Emergency vehicles near Rödingsmarkt station.
Police response at accident scene.
HafenCity.
Dammtor train station.
Night traffic next to the Hauptbahnhof (central station).
Hauptbahnhof at night.
Visiting FC St Pauli fans arrive at the Volksparkstadion.
A night match at the Volksparkstadion, with Hamburger SV hosting FC St. Pauli.
Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, at dusk
Flughafen Knuffingen Airport
At the airport.
Airport traffic.
By day, front-to-back: All Nippon Airways (ANA) Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, “Hamburg Airport” Airbus 350-800, KLM Boeing 777-300(ER) PH-BVA, and Lufthansa Airbus 380-800 D-AIMA.
Early-evening at the airport.
Night landing: at centre is the taxiing TUIfly Boeing 737-8K5 D-ATUM.
Plane taxiing
Germany (Bavaria)
Schloss Neuschwanstein.
Freienstein.
Switzerland
Visitors tower over a cavernous mountain valley in Switzerland.
St. Max.
Belloszona.
Visitors check out the model set for Belloszona.
20-thousand spectators at DJ Bobo concert in Ticino.
Scandinavia
Rail- and road-bridge, North Sea crossing between Denmark and Norway.
Cargo train pulls into the Norwegian port city of Bergvik.
Rail- and vehicular-traffic pass in front of a weather station in northern Sweden.
United States of America
Greyhound bus passes hikers and horseriders in the desert of the American Southwest.
Interstate highway passes below Mount Rushmore National Memorial (upper right).
Approaching Las Vegas.
Las Vegas at night.
Fall of the Berlin Wall (temporary exhibition)
Flooding into the west, East Berliners form a narrow queue at the open border between the two Berlins and two Germanys (from east/bottom to west/top).
East German border guards supervise as their citizens climb over the wall into the West, where grilled sausage awaits.
A long narrow queue of East Berliners (top-left/DDR) pours into West Berlin (lower-right).
The border between East Berlin/Germany and West Berlin/Germany consisted of manned watchtowers, triggered automatic rifles, mines, roaming patrols, and the infamous “death strip” (Todesstreife).
Miniatur Wunderland (or MiWuLa) can be reached with HVV public transport: U-Bahn U3 to station “Baumwall”, or bus route 6 to stop “Auf dem Sande (Speicherstadt)”.
More
• Miniature “Christmas eggs”.
• Hamburg’s new UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
• Fotoeins Friday: Hamburg Speicherstadt, new UNESCO WHS.
• Fotoeins Friday: Hamburg at night, Kontorhausviertel UNESCO WHS.
• “Wunderland Hamburg: A Paradise for Model Railway Fans”, 49-min WELT Documentary, in English.
I made all photos and video above on 5 December 2015 with a Canon EOS6D mark1. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-8k9.
Fotoeins Fotografie 
4 Responses to “Hamburg: Miniatur Wunderland, where tiny rules large”
OMG, that is the most precious Wunderland I’ve ever seen, I didn’t know about. There is so much history and daily life exhibited. Thank you so much for sharing. Can I share?
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Hi, Cornelia. Please go to Hamburg, and if there’s only one thing you’ll see, visit the Speicherstadt, walk around the warehouse district for a bit, and then step inside Miniatur Wunderland. If you liked what few things I showed on your screen, imagine what glorious things you’ll see, find, and discover in person! They keep expanding, and after my visit, they introduced an “Italy” section. Useful tip: go first thing on a weekday morning 😅 Thank you for reading and for your comment. Please by all means share, and let me know when you do.
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The Miniatur Wunderland is a beautiful place. Everywhere you can find tiny details you might have missed during a previous visit. Last time for me there was back in 2011 but I hope to go there again either this year or next year 🙂
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Hi Timo. I hope you go back soon to Miniatur Wunderland and make some new discoveries and memories. They recently opened a new “Italy” section of the museum 😊
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