Hauptkirche St. Michaelis

Lightning, then a workman's blowlamp: the Michel has burned to the ground twice. The baroque church Hamburg knows was raised between 1750 and 1762 by Johann Leonhard Prey and Ernst Georg Sonnin, after lightning destroyed its predecessor; Sonnin added the tower, with the copper hood that fixes the city's skyline, between 1777 and 1786. Fire took it again in 1906, and by 1912 it had been rebuilt in steel and concrete inside the surviving outer walls — only the font and an offertory box came through. War damage was made good between 1947 and 1952. It is the foremost baroque church of northern Germany, and its music, from organ recitals to oratorio with orchestra, is inseparable from the acoustic of that white and gold interior.