Dortmund

Dortmund is a 587,010 inhabitants city located in the southwestern part of North Rhine-Westphalia. Dortmund is the 9th largest city in Germany and the 3rd largest in North Rhine-Westphalia; it is well known because of its football team, Borussia Dortmund, the 2nd most important club in Germany. It's also the largest city in Ruhr region and, as almost all the cities in the region, it's mines and factories has been changed for high technology industries, art galleries and beer breweries.

How do I arrive to Dortmund?

  Dortmund is quite well connected with the whole Ruhr region as well as other places in North Rhine-Westphalia state. 

• Train: there are trains very frequent trains to Bochum (aprox. 10 minutes), Essen (aprox. 25 minutes), Düsseldorf (aprox. 50 minutes) or Cologne (aprox. 1 hour 20 minutes). There are also trains every 30 minutes to Münster (aprox. 40 minutes), Bielefeld (aprox. 50 minutes), Paderborn (aprox. 1 hour 10 minutes) and places outside the federal state like Osnabrück (aprox. 1 hour 10 minutes), Hannover (aprox. 1 hour 40 minutes) or Kassel (aprox. 2 hours 15 minutes).  
• Bus: Dortmund is also well connectedd by bus with several destinations within North Rhine-Westphalia state and neighbouring countries.
• Car: if you rented a car, from Dortmund it can be reached Bochum and Gerlsenkirchen (aprox. 25 minutes), Essen (aprox. 30 minutes), Altena (aprox. 35 minutes), Soest (aprox. 40 minutes), Duisburg (aprox. 50 minutes), Düsseldorf (aprox. 1 hour), Cologne and Siegen (aprox. 1 hour 10 minutes), Münster (aprox. 1 hour), Bielefeld (aprox. 1 hour 10 minutes), Paderborn (aprox. 1 hour 15 minutes) or Detmold (aprox. 1.5 hours).

History

 Dortmund was founded around the year 882 as Throtmanni and it became an Imperial Free City and one of the first cities in Europe with an official Brewing right in 1293. Throughout the 13th and 14th centuries, it was the chief city of the Rhine, Westphalia, and of the Netherlandish Circle of the Hanseatic League when Cologne was excluded of it. After the Thirty Years' War, the city was destroyed and decreased in significance until the onset of industrialization. After the French revolution it was was added to the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fuldaand at the Congress of Vienna in 1815,  Dortmund was handed over to the Kingdom of Prussia. In the 19th century it became one of Germany's most important coal, steel and beer centers, acquired the nickname Stahlstadt (Steel City) when it became the world center of steel production. Consequently, the city was one of the most heavily bombed cities in Germany during WW2. The devastating bombing raids of 12 March 1945 destroyed 98% of buildings in the inner city center so much of what can be seen in the city center was built in the last 50 years. The region has adapted since the collapse of its steel and coal industries, and shifted to high technology, biomedical technology, micro systems technology and also services. Since the beginning of the 21st century Dortmund was ranked as the 7th most livable city in Germany.
 

What can I visit in Dortmund?

 Dortmund is a large city but many of its tourist attractions are located near Hauptbahnhof.

These are Dortmund's main attractions:

• German Football Museum (10-18 Tue-Sun; 15€/ 12€/ free  adults/ students under 26/ kids under 6): museum dedicated to one of the German passions, football. It has many objects related to the German National Team and their clubs as well as it tells stories weird matches like the one between Italy in Germany in Mexico World Cup 1970.
• St. Petri Lutheran Church (10-17): 14th century church with a spectacular altarpiece from Antwerp, The Golden Wonder of Westphalia (1521). It has 633 gilded figures and its theme is the Passion of Jesus. 
• St. Reinoldi Lutheran Church (14-19 Mon-Sat, 10-18 Sun): 1280 church dedicated to the city's patron saint, a monk called Reinold, whose coffin is said to have arrived and stopped here. It has a nice late Gothic altarpiece and the views from the bell tower are a highlight too.
• St. Marien Lutheran Church (12-18 Thu-Sun): oldest church in Dortmund with Romanesque origin, which houses notable altarpieces like Marienaltar by Conrad von Soest and the Berswordtaltar. They survived WW2 but the church didn't, it was rebuilt afterwards.
• Dortmund U Tower (11-18 Tue-Wed and Sat-Sun, 11-20 Thu-Fri): former tower of Union Brauerei, one of the most popular beers in Dortmund. Nowadays it's an art gallery with free outdoors expositions and in the 3 last floors it's placed the Museum Am Ostwall (free). This art gallery displays a collection of 20th and 21st centuries art that goes from Expresionism to Informalism or Fluxus and from op-art to concrete art. Some of theworks of arts are by artists like Macke, Nolde, Beuys, Pik, Jochen Gerz or Anna and Bernhard Blume.
• Westfalen Park (10-20; 2€): the biggest park in Dortmund is a place where locals go to spend their free time, particulary in spring and summer when the flowers are in full bloom.
• Florian Tower (2.50€): 220 m high tower (14th highest structure in Germany) completed in 1959 as a  television tower. There are great views of Dortmund from here.
• DASA Working World Exhibition (9-17 Mon-Fri, 10-18 Sat-Sun; 8€/ 5€/ free  adults/ students/ kids under 6): interactive museum where you can test all sorts of jobs for yourself (specially recommended for people travelling with kids).
• Phoenix Lake: artificial lake built the site of an enormous steelworks in the 1990s. Today it is a popular recreation area and modern housing development.
• Steinwache (10-17 Tue-Sun): monument located in a former Nazi prission where more than 66,000 people were inprissioned (many of them tortured and murdered).
• Dortmund Natural History Museum (10-12 and 13-15 Tue-Sun): museum whose exhibitions focuses on exhibits from the fields of biology, geology and paleontology. It has expositions dedicated to mushrooms, a worthy aquarium, minerals from North Rhine-Westphalia and a large collection large number of fossils, particularly ammonites.
• LWL Industrial Museum Zollern (10-18 Tue-Sun; 5€/ 2.50€/ free  adults/ students/ kids under 18): museum located in the former coal mine Zollern II/IV (1902), one of the most advanced on its time. Its architectura is spectacular, with a Modernist engine room, an office with castle shape or tower with with onion-shaped cupola. Its expositions shows the job of miner and its poor working conditions. 
• Bodelschwingh Palace: 13th century Schloss, considered one of the best preserved in all Ruhrgebiet, that has been in the family of Baron zu Knyphausen ownership for more than 700 years. 

German Mining Museum

 Ruhr region has many other interesting towns and cities that are worth to be explored. Not far from Dortmund, 23 km east it's located Bochum (Baukem in Low German), a 364,628 city between Essen and Dortmund and home of one of the 10 largest universities in Germany, Ruhr University Bochum. It has one of the most active nightlife scene in the region, specially in Bermuda Dreieck (formed by the streets Kortumstraße, Viktoriastraße and Brüderstraße). A very interesting museum to visit here is German Mining Museum (8:30-17 Tue-Fri, 10-17 Sat-Sun; 10€/ 5€/ free  adults/ students/ kids under 6), museum that gives an insight into a miner's life by visiting a mine gallery, different shafts or visit its tower to have views of Bochum. It's one of the most visited museums in whole Germany. Here it can also be visited Bochum Dahlhausen Railway Museum (10-17 Tue-Fri and Sun from Mar to Nov; 8€/ 4€/ free  adults/ kids under 14/ kids under 6), a huge railway museum that train lovers will be very fond of. It displays 180 steam locomotives and carriages that go back to as old as 1853.

Osthaus Museum

Going 25 km south from Dortmund it's located Hagen, a 188,814 inhabitants city where the rivers Lenne and Volme meet the river Ruhr and home FernUniversität Hagen, which is the only state funded distance education university in Germany. It has a couple of interesting art museum, whose entrance ticket is combined: Osthaus Museum (12-18 Tue-Sun; 7€/ 3.50€/ free  adults/ students/ kids under 6), museum placed on a building by Henry van de Velde with exhibitions of Art Nouveau and expressionist art with works by German artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Otto Dix and with a large collection of paintings by Christian Rohlfs; and Emil Schumacher Museum (12-18 Tue-Sun), museum dedicated to Emil Schumacher, one of the most important representatives of abstract expressionism in post-war Germany, with more than 500 works of arts by him. Other interesting sightseeing points in Hagen are LWL-Hagen Open Air Museum (9-17:30 Tue-Sat, 9-18 Sun; from Apr to Oct; 8€/ 4€/ free  adults/ students/ people under 18), collection of historic industrial facilities where trades such as printing, brewing, smithing, milling, and many others are represented as living, working operations that visitors may in some cases even be invited to participate in and Bunker Hagen (guided tours), a luxury bunker from 1940 with one of the largest exhibitions on German civil air defense in WW2.

What can I do and eat in Dortmund?

Match day in Signal Iduna Park

Dortmund is mainly known all over the world because of its football team, Borussia Dortmund. The team is considered the 2nd best in whole Germany, having won Bundesliga 5 times (1995,1996, 2002, 2011, 2012), being second 6 times and third 6 times. A very popular activity when in Dortmund is attending a match at their stadium, Westfalenstadium (currently known as Signal Iduna Park), the largest in Germany and the 7th largest in Europe. In case you aren't lucky enough to get tickets for the match or you aren't on a match day, it can also be visited Boruseum (10-18 Mon-Fri, 9:30-18 Sat-Sun; 6€/ 4€/ free  adults/ students/ kids under 6), a museum about the team's history and values.
Dortmund's best local beer is Dortmunder Kronen, a variety of pilsner beer. To eat there isn't a wide offer but some of best choices are the beer hall Wenkers am Markt (Betenstraße 1) or Zum Alten Markt (Markt 3), a traditional Westphalian resturant.

Posted in: Europe,Germany,North Rhine-Westphalia