Forty-nine years ago, Hamburg played a part in helping to launch the international career of one of the most important rock bands of all time. Now Beatlemania Hamburg, an exhibition dedicated to the British band, opens its doors to the public on the Reeperbahn, near the venues in which they once performed.

In the early 1960s, the young members of The Beatles honed their skills onstage in various clubs around the Reeperbahn area of the German city of Hamburg, by playing for up to nine hours at a time.

From there they went on to conquer the world.

Exhibition curator Ulf Kruger said, "It was always my dream to have a place like this in Hamburg because there's two places in the world, Liverpool and Hamburg, to have a Beatle museum. In Liverpool they've got a Beatle World already and we had a first step last year, the Beatle square, the Beatle Platz, and this is the second, a real, huge step, the Beatle Museum, Beatlemania. My idea was always, sometime having a place like this to remind the world that Hamburg was one half of the birthplaces of the Beatles and I hope we are going to succeed."

Visitors to Beatlemania can travel through time, re-living the world of John, Paul, George and Ringo.

They follow the footsteps of the Fab Four during their wild times in Germany, record songs at Abbey Road Studios and experience the madness of Beatlemania at its peak.