Moments from Elbphilharmonie

Hamburg's concert hall took nearly a decade longer to build than planned and ended up costing roughly ten times its original budget, a saga so drawn out that it became a genuine local joke before the building even opened in January 2017, designed by Herzog & de Meuron atop a preserved 1960s brick warehouse, the old Kaispeicher, right on the harbor. The finished building pairs the blocky red-brick base with an undulating glass structure on top, shaped like a wave or a hoisted sail depending on the light, that has since become the single defining image of Hamburg's skyline.

You don't need a concert ticket to experience the building: the Plaza, a public viewing platform that wraps around the structure roughly at the point where old brick meets new glass, is free and open daily, reached by one of the longest curved escalators in Europe, and it gives a genuinely spectacular 360-degree view over the harbor and the city. If you do have tickets to a performance, arrive early enough to walk the Plaza first, most visitors treat it as an afterthought when it's really the building's most democratic gesture, the one part of this extraordinarily expensive project that anyone can walk into for free.