This weekend Hamburg Port celebrated its second Cruise Days festival with a spectacular cruise ship parade. The art project “Blue Port” and more than 150,000 visitors turned the port into a worldwide unique stage and offered unusual views of the maritime metropolis and its waterfront.
Could there be a better place for luxury liners to set anchor than the Port of Hamburg? The beautiful and bustling Port of Hamburg is one of the “cruise capitals” in Northern Europe, regularly attracting cruise liners from far and wide. For the second time the hanseatic city was celebrating the Hamburg Cruise Days from July 30 to August 1, 2010. Never before has a port of Hamburg’s importance offered cruise ships a comparable platform with a stunning artistic project of this type.
This year AIDAaura, Astor, Columbus, Deutschland, Mein Schiff were the floating stars of the Hamburg Cruise Days 2010 and turned the river Elbe into a glittering open-air arena in front of more than 150,000 excited spectators. The fleet of cruise ships lined up in front of the HafenCity, led by the sailors Atlantis and Sedov, guided by the museum-freighter Cap San Diego and surrounded by countless boats and barks. The maritime flock was sailing downstream the Elbe in keel line – what a sight!
The whole scenery was staged in a sparkling-blue created by “Light-Magician” Michael Batz who dipped more than 50 objects, buildings and ships in magic blue light. Among these were such striking features of Hamburg’s skyline as the Köhlbrand Bridge, the St. Michaelis church, the Elbphilharmonie building site and the rapid transit rail viaduct. The river Elbe turned into a gigantic maritime blue catwalk – the color of seafarers.