Every design for Bremerhaven

On the quay outside the Deutsches Auswandererhaus it takes little imagination to see the crowds who once waited here for ships to North America. Bremerhaven owes its existence to that traffic. In 1827 Bremen, under its Bürgermeister Johann Smidt, bought land at the mouth of the Weser from the Kingdom of Hanover, because silt was choking its own old river port, and founded a new harbour downstream.

The place still carries that feeling of departure. Trade and emigration made the town grow fast; shipbuilding and fishing followed. Hanover answered with a rival town, Geestemünde, across the Geeste, and for a century the two grew side by side until the whole conurbation was returned to Bremen after the Second World War. Bremerhaven was even the home port of the German Confederation's navy. Today the museum harbour keeps that past afloat: the Schulschiff Deutschland, the Seefalke, the steam icebreaker Wal and the submarine Wilhelm Bauer lie at their moorings.

And at the end of the day there is the river itself, so wide at the mouth that the town calls itself a Seestadt, with a ship sliding past the dyke.