Hamburg's Chilehaus looks like nothing so much as a vast brick ocean liner run aground between two streets, its prow jutting sharply where the buildings meet. Completed in 1924, it was commissioned by Henry Sloman, then the richest man in Hamburg, who had built his fortune importing Chilean nitrate for gunpowder and fertiliser, hence the peculiar name.

Architect Fritz Höger gave it the swagger of German Brick Expressionism, coaxing curves, angles and motion out of plain rectangular bricks, and topped it with carved pelicans, penguins and condors nodding to its Chilean connections. It stands among a cluster of Kontorhäuser, the shipping offices built after Hamburg's devastating 1892 cholera epidemic forced a rethink of the old town.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours walk this district building by building, tracing how Hamburg's maritime trade fortunes shaped both its skyline and its darker later history.