Hamburg -bremerhaven – Full Day Excursion From Hamburg

Bremerhaven means Bremen’s harbour, and that is exactly what it is: a seaport belonging to the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen but sitting as an enclave inside Lower Saxony, at the mouth of the Weser opposite Nordenham. As the most important North Sea base of the wartime navy it was largely destroyed by allied bombing, and the city your clients see today is a young one built on a very old trading function. It remains one of Germany’s principal ports. For North American and Australian guests it is also, quite literally, where the family story begins.

The German Emigration Center

The museum stands on the historic site of the New Harbour, opened in 1852, from which around 1.2 million people left for the New World by 1890. Together with the Old Harbour, the Imperial Harbours and the Columbus Wharf, Bremerhaven despatched some 7.2 million emigrants in total. The centre was the first migration museum in Germany and won the European Museum of the Year Award in 2007 for the way it stages the crossing: your clients follow individual passengers rather than statistics, and can research when their own ancestors left Europe and on which ship.

The German Maritime Museum, or Stade instead

The afternoon splits two ways. The Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum is worth the trip for its ships alone – a Hanseatic cog of 1380 recovered from the bed of the Weser and conserved over decades, fleets of small craft from the Middle Ages onward, and the deep-sea and coastal vessels in the museum harbour, alongside models, navigation instruments and the record of German shipping in war and peace. The alternative is the half-timbered town of Stade, whose Hansa harbour in the middle of the old town once weighed and taxed cargo and now carries small shops, pubs and cafes with terraces on the water.

Who it is for, and how to place it

Book it for guests researching family history, for anyone with a maritime interest, and as a strong indoor day when the weather closes in. Children handle the emigration centre better than most museums because it is built around people. It is a long day and works best with an overnight in Hamburg either side. For a lighter alternative in the same direction, the full-day excursion to Bremen swaps museums for the old town and the Ratskeller. Guide languages are covered under our professional guide service, the regional products under our Bremen portfolio, and the city base on the Hamburg destination page.