Hamburg

City was built near the river Alster and a dam created a lake north of  the original city.The big river Elbe created the southern border of the town and a great harbor for the merchants. Whilst the old quarters south of this lake are now the bustling city center, already the first rich merchants built beautiful houses (like the one you see in the middle of the collage) as a summer house for themselves and their families, to escape the smaller quarters downtown. This happened in the 1800s and sometimes even earlier - (but of the very early villas outside of the city walls there are not many left over.) They preferred , of course , a location on one of the numerous canals or even on the border of the lake Alster . These huge houses were meant for one family and their servants. I am pretty sure that the center house still has only one owner.
In the top row you see houses as they were built outside the former city walls for wealthy families but each family had one story of the house.This was done by the end of the 1800s and beginning1900s.  Businesses alongside the street at street level. As this street and many others in this area have been mostly spared by the bombing during the war, this makes for a huge number of houses with  beautiful architecture that can be admired during a walk.
In the upper row , third picture, you see one of the architectural sins of the sixties and seventies of the last century. When there was an opening in between some villas, they squeezed in a house in a style that was absolutely not matching it’s neighboring houses and rented out every story to 3 or 4 families.
Picture number 4 on the left shows a relatively narrow house, that has one owner still and just one parking spot. The remaining pictures of single houses are probably now all owned by several owners.
What was affordable living in a green surrounding in the days when I studied, is now only for the "rich and beautiful". Even 2 room apartments ( and that does not mean 2 bedrooms!)  cost more than a million here. Euro.
It is still a beautiful walk, especially when the sun is out. The streets are quiet and I enjoy the beauty of the houses very much.Many houses look as if they have a lot of stories to tell.  It is a shame that the real estate prices have been exploding so much that young couples cannot find anything in a nice area anymore. To live in a dwelling at a ‘normal' price they have to go to places 35 km away from the center. That is now called the “lard belt” of Hamburg.

Just posted this and am a little sad that the whole thing looks not very sharp on my IMac. The decorations on the houses are so pretty. It is sharp in IPhoto....Maybe too on the little devices, like phones. I will put one more picture in the extras of an old house for several families next to an ugly more modern building for many, many families.