Old Tunnel under the Elbe

Brief information

You do not enter this tunnel from an ordinary ramp: people and cars are lowered beneath the Elbe by elevators. This solution arose because of Hamburg’s cramped city center and its navigable river. A high bridge would have required long ramps, while a swing bridge would have interfered with ship traffic, so in the early 20th century they chose a route beneath the riverbed.

The original purpose was very practical. The new part of the port was on the opposite bank, and tens of thousands of dockworkers needed to get to work every day. Ferries obstructed ships, depended on the weather, and created queues. So from the start, the tunnel was designed not as an underground corridor for pedestrians only, but as a transport link for people, cars, and horse-drawn carriages. It still operates today, although after the construction of the new road tunnel its importance became more engineering-historical.

What to notice first

Here it makes sense to read the tunnel as a ferrying machine. The two parallel tubes show that the flow was separated and calculated in advance. The internal diameter of each tube is 4.8 meters, and the height was made with an unexpected margin: a coachman had to be able to swing his whip freely. This detail immediately moves the structure from the era of early automobiles into the world of horse-drawn carriages.

The elevator shafts explain the place’s main feature better than any date: each entrance had four freight elevators and two passenger elevators, because the tunnel has no approach roads. The northern entrance is designed as a brick rotunda under a copper dome, with a pediment and columns; the southern one was rebuilt more simply after wartime destruction. Inside, you can compare the road logic with the decorative finish: sidewalks and roadway sit alongside ceramic tiles, majolica bas-reliefs on maritime and Arctic themes, and turbines under the ceiling.