Old factories, coal mines, steel mills and silos converted into exhibition spaces, museums, leisure parks and experimentation areas. It is the capillary project of reconversion of the Ruhr basin – one of the most industrialized areas of Europe and the world – which, after the decline of the coal and steel industry, has been able to recover and value its heritage at an architectural, cultural and social level. This is why the Ruhr, five million inhabitants and 4,500 km2 of surface, from Duisburg to Essen, through Dortmund, is the unusual and surprising Capital of European Culture 2010.
Industrial Archaeology heritage
The metropolitan region of the Ruhr develops with the industrial revolution: where only fields and villages existed before, in 800 and 900 and thanks to the coal mines there are settlements, urban areas and a dense network of cities. Ruhr becomes one of the most populated regions in Europe, strongholds of heavy industry, mining and processing of coal and steel. After the crisis of the great European industry in the 1960s, conversion was neither fast nor easy.
With a series of public and private investments, a spirit of initiative, a lot of will and precision, however, in the area has invested in research, education, alternative economies and culture, to look to the future with renewed optimism. Not only that: the rich architectural and industrial heritage has been saved and reconverted, becoming a real open-air museum and impressive cultural heritage. Zeche Zollverein, in Essen (www.zollverein.de), was one of the world's largest mines for extension and production. Founded in 1847 and directly connected to the railway for the immediate carriage of goods by rail, Zeche Zollverein incorporated offices, houses, churches, hospitals, schools for workers and their families.
Today this huge complex, named cultural heritage by UNESCO and important example of industrial architecture, can be visited, to retrace the cycles of mining and coal processing and to know the hard work in the mines. But the Zeche Zollverein is, above all, a cultural centre and avant-garde artistic experimentation: it houses the Red Dot Museum – the largest design museum in the world (www.red-dot.de), exhibition and exhibition spaces, a dance and choreography center (PACT Zollverein, www.pact-zollverein.de) and also a skating rink, an outdoor pool, coffee and restaurants.
In Dortmund, however, the Zeche Zollern (www.zeche-zollern.de) recalls, with its towers and crenellated walls, a medieval fortress. The complex, built in 1900 in neo-Gothic style, is representative of the taste on horseback between the two centuries. Behind the historical and elegant facades, however, there was the hard life of the workers: to them is dedicated the mine, today Museum of social and cultural culture of the Ruhr.
The Jahrhunderthalle (http://www.jahrhunderthalle-bochum.de/) of Bochum – an imposing building that almost resembles a Gothic church – was the gas station for the production of energy indispensable for the steel mills in the area. Since 2003 the Jahrhunderhalle is home to the prestigious RuhrTriennale exhibition.
Thanks to the project of the Petzinka studio, Pink & Partner in Düsseldorf, the immense machine rooms and the working areas of the past have left their place on stage, theatre rooms and elegant foyers. Only and sensational is the Oberhausen Gasometer (www.gasometer.de).
The gigantic circular building, 117 meters high, which once served for the conservation of gas, is today the largest exhibition hall in Europe, where exhibitions and exhibitions are held (the most spectacular, perhaps, The Wall of Christ and Jeanne-Claude in 1999), but also concerts with an incredible acoustic effect.
Art Factories
A visit to Ruhr leads to surprising discoveries of industrial archaeology, but it is also an opportunity to visit excellent museums. The Ruhrlandmuseum in Essen (www.ruhrlandmuseum.de), now housed in the spaces of the Zeche Zollverein, is dedicated to the history of the region, from prehistory to our days, where great attention is reserved for life and working conditions in factories and mines during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Rheinisches Industriemuseum is located in Oberhausen (www.rim.lvr.de), to reflect on the technical, social and community aspects of life and work through documents, objects, artifacts, dedicated exhibitions, films and findings of all kinds. For those who want to learn more about the living and working conditions of yesterday and today, with interesting interactive and educational sections to understand the risks and psycho-physical challenges related to the professions, there is the DASA Museum (www.dasa-dortmund.de) in Dortmund.
Not all Ruhr museums are, however, dedicated to industrial historyand the region. Hagen, for example, is home to a beautiful exhibition center dedicated to the German artist Emil Schumacher, inaugurated last August and that completes the important collection of the Osthaus Museum (www.osthausmuseum.de). In Essen, you can visit Villa Hügel (www.villahuegel.de), the most important industrial dynasty house in Germany, the Krupp. Through the 100 rooms of the villa and the 4,500 square kilometers of garden you will find glories, secrets and pains of a family as powerful as it was troubled.
Back to Nature
If the advent of the industrial revolution has undeniably damaged the territory, the conversion has also come to free the spaces and the environment. Where there were large chimneys, smoke and dust, nature returns in the form of parks, gardens and green areas. It is an excellent example of this. Landschaftspark of Duisburg (www.landschaftspark.de), where the furnaces and the immense spaces of the factories have been saved to oblivion to make it stage, hall for musical performances, places for leisure.
The impressive furnace walls were converted by the German Alpine Club into climbing walls and the gasometer became a circular diving pool. All around, nature has regained its spaces: 300 types of plants have found here a fertile ground to grow, while they have recently begun to live and nest here more than 60 breeds of different birds.
A true open-air museum is the Freilichtmuseum in Hagen where, in a large natural park, you can visit the workshops of the artisans of the past: printers, weavers, blacksmiths show to adults and children how you worked once to produce paper, print books, forge the indispensable tools for agriculture (www.lwl.org).
In the park were rebuilt, all with original materials, houses, buildings and factories of the XIX and XX century. For the most sporty, perhaps in the beautiful season, the Ruhr also reserves long and well-kept cycle paths, to reach from site to site, from museum to museum and from city to city comfortably by bike. Information on the slopes and bicycle rental in the tourist offices of cities throughout the region.
