20 years Miniatur-Wunderland Hamburg
Exactly 20 years ago today, the Miniatur Wunderland opened its doors to visitors. Since then it has grown considerably and has become Germany's most popular tourist attraction - a reason to include this here as a daily news item. After all, the founders Frederik and Gerrit Braun have managed to make model railways respectable for large audiences in this way. It all started with the Knuffingen, Austria and Central Germany sections, which were soon joined by other themed landscapes such as Hamburg, USA, Switzerland, Airport Knuffingen, Italy (since 2018 with Venice), Monaco and soon South America. Our photos are from the opening day of the Italy section (28 September 2016), in which Sicily with Mount Etna plays a major role alongside the capital Rome.
A few more key points about the show layout:
- 1,499 m² of facility area
- approx. 20 million visitors since 2001
- before the pandemic restrictions, more than 1 million visitors per year
- approx. 1 million working hours invested
- 36 million construction costs to date
- 360 employees take care of the facility, its operation and visitors.
The anniversary celebration was cancelled in view of the current restrictions. Gerrit Braun explains: "Every day we receive letters from disappointed parents asking for tickets for their children's birthdays or mails from foreign guests who absolutely want to see the Miniatur Wunderland during their once-in-a-lifetime visit to Hamburg. We already have to disappoint far too many of these people because of the current situation. We simply didn't want to also cause additional sad faces when we celebrate our 20th anniversary with a far too small circle of people."
By the way, it's worth a look: the Miniatur Wunderland has put together an anniversary film of about three minutes on its own website, which summarises the highs (and lows) of the last twenty years in an exciting way.
