The Jungfernstieg is a street on the southern shore of the Binnenalster in the center of Hamburg. It runs from the Reesendamm bridge to the Gänsemarkt and is the first street in Germany to be paved (1838).
Originally created as Reesendamm for damming the Alster in 1235 under Count Adolf IV of Schauenburg and Holstein, he was the site of the upper mill. One of the oak piles from which the dam was built has been turned into a sculpture by Richard Luksch that can be viewed on the platform of the U1 and commemorates the victims of a water leak during the construction of this station in the 1930s. The Jungfernstieg was Germany’s first street, which was already paved in 1838.
After the Great Fire in 1842, a regulation of the Alster was made, their main drain was passed through an old moat under the Reesendammbrücke by the Kleine Alster to the Alsterarkaden, while the old drainage through today’s Nikolaifleet was. The south side of the Jungfernstieges was rebuilt. From 1843 to 1881, the first large shopping arcade, Sillem’s Bazar, was on Jungfernstieg.
The street was given its name by a bourgeois rite: on the boulevard on Sunday, families took their unmarried ladies, the maidens, for a walk.
