We’d done a little bit of research for our visit to Hamburg during our Island Princess Western Europe cruise in 2022 and seen that one of the top-rated attractions was a place called Miniatur Wunderland. Miniatur Wunderland is marketed as the world’s largest model railway which in itself doesn’t sound that interesting unless you’re really, really into model railways. Some people are. We’re not them, though. Don’t get me wrong; I think model railways can be fantastic with lots of scaled-down attention to detail and lovely little landscapes. But it’s definitely one of those things that falls into the “uh huh, that’s nice, I’m glad you really, really like it and all that” category. For us.
Why, then, did we visit Miniatur Wunderland in the first place? Well, as I’ve said, it was one of the top-rated things to do in Hamburg, and it wasn’t too far from where the cruise ship would be docked or where the shuttle bus would drop us off. It was either that or churches or museums, mostly, and this just felt like it might be different enough to be interesting, and we’d still have time to do the churches and museums that we typically visit when travelling.
Miniatur Wunderland proved to be more than interesting. It was enchanting. It was stunning. It was far more than we were expecting. We anticipated that we might spend half an hour there, perhaps. Maybe. We actually spent the entire morning in Hamburg in the former warehouse building, and we could easily have taken more time, had a break for lunch in the café there, and eaten up a whole chunk of the afternoon too. To emphasise this further: we love doing new things when we visit places for the second or third time, but if we go back to Hamburg then there’s a very strong chance we might just hit Miniatur Wunderland again. It was that good.
So, what can you expect from a visit to Miniatur Wunderland? It’s going to be rammed with people. If you don’t like crowds then perhaps this isn’t for you. Use of face masks is optional, so consider this too. True to its name, though, your eyes will light up in wonder once you first set foot in the building.
The model railway layouts are roughly grouped geographically so you can wander amongst European cities and landscapes from Italy then Scandinavia then Germany and several others before finding yourself looking down on miniature places in the USA or South America. And since Miniatur Wunderland is always expanding and making changes then don’t be surprised to find Antarctica and Asia appearing in years to come.
Some models are accurate representations of real places, and some are somewhat fictionalised amalgamations of place-types, but the attention to detail is what will mesmerise you and why you’ll spend so long loving every moment here; the figurines of people doing everyday (and sometimes rather odd) activities; decorations inside buildings seen through windows. And through them all, of course, trains or cars or trucks or even other transport types such as balloons and rockets and planes will move around. Some of the vehicles even have cameras in them and there are TV screens allowing you to see what the passengers in those vehicles can see. Words cannot convey the utter joy that is Miniatur Wunderland.
And since words can’t convey it I’ll try to let some of the pictures mostly do the job instead now but you really need to visit to truly appreciate how fantastic this place is.
One interesting aspect was the daily cycle that took place across exhibits. Some areas periodically dimmed the surrounding light level and the scenes took on their night time views, complete with twinkling lights in windows, street lights illuminating, and any related nocturnal activities, including associated sounds.
In the photo below you can get a little sense of the scale of Miniatur Wunderland where some exhibits extend over two floors of the building. It’s both small and massive.
The airport was a fun but noisy area. Stand around near the runway and every minute or two another plane will land or taxi and take off. Lots of different aircraft, lots of different flight operators to spot and say “Ooh, we’ve flown with them!” You’ll be able to see a model plane taking off in the video at the end of this post.
It was nice to see a cruise ship represented in model form at Miniatur Wunderland and, naturally, it had to be a German cruise operator. In this case it was AIDAblu operated by AIDA cruises.
One of the more fictionalised areas – well, we hope – was the series of underground lairs in a cutaway section between rooms with aliens conducting experiments on humans and reinforcing the views of conspiracy theorists with cans of chemtrail mix and filming against moonscape backdrops. A lot of fun.
There were a few interactive areas throughout the Miniatur Wunderland exhibits. You could trigger the start of a Space Shuttle launch, for instance. In the Venice area you could set off an earthquake to shake the scenery, make some of the buildings topple over or lose parts of their façades, and, if you looked carefully, catch a glimpse of some bedroom activity taking place in one of the houses. That wasn’t the only bit of risqué imagery on view, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise of discovering things for yourself.
It was nice to spot a familiar-looking skyline in one part where a town was clearly modelled with thoughts of San Gimignano, a nice trip for us on a previous Princess cruise in Europe.
The final section we passed through was a walkway connecting the main building to another housing the areas they were starting to add to extend the range of exhibits on show, along the length of which a train track sent trains back and forth along a changing landscape from shanty towns to the sea and fields of lavender.
We were hours in Miniatur Wunderland and, as I’ve said before, we could have spent hours more. It’s noisy, crowded, but absolutely should be visited if you’re ever in Hamburg, Germany. It has a café and a large gift shop area too.
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll make our way to St Michael’s Church in order to see the city of Hamburg from its tower and to see what lay below ground too.