Hamburg is located in the Northern part of Germany. Please find more information and a map in the brochure "Facts about Germany". For general information, facts and figures about Hamburg we recommend taking a look on www.hamburg.de (English version).
With 1.7 million inhabitants, the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg is the second largest city in Germany and one of the 16 federal states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Hamburg is both a city and a state.
Hamburg is also culturally and commercially the center of all of Northern Germany. The metropolitan region consists of 3.5 million people for which Hamburg is the shopping and cultural metropolis. The municipal area with its 755 km2 is seven times the size of Paris and 2.5 times that of London.
The port is the heart of Hamburg, sustaining the business life of the city but also setting the cosmopolitan tone of open-mindedness and international connections. With its ultra-modern airport handling over 10 million flights per year, its container port is the largest in Germany and second largest in Europe, with a well-planned road and rail infrastructure, Hamburg is the preferred location for trading houses and businesses. Over 350,000 companies of all sizes have their registered seat in the city. Industries in the city include manufacturing in fields as diverse as aerospace and paper, hi-tech and handicraft. As the German centre for broadcasting and publishing, Hamburg has a host of associated service industries including advertising, insurance, and information technology. Serving all this economic activity are the lawyers of Hamburg (number of firms with links all over the world including the USA).
At the same time Hamburg is a congenial city to live in. With its parks, promenades, imposing city centre and leafy residential streets, Hamburg is known for its beauty. Culture thrives with renowned theatres, opera, ballet and a classical music scene worthy of Mendelssohn and Brahms, both sons of the city. The undercurrent to all this is the Hamburg mentality, understated but alert, meticulously polite but friendly - the product of centuries of internationalism.
The legal culture is also central to Hamburg life. Hamburg is proud of its political autonomy as a city state within the Federal Republic of Germany. This independence has a long history with the earliest constitutional documents and legal statutes for Hamburg dating from the 13th century. Today Hamburg is host to legal institutions of national and global significance: the Hamburg state courts, the Max Planck Institute for Foreign Private and Private International Law and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
