The Ruhrgebiet is Germany's hairy armpit. The land is flat, the rivers fetid, the sky occasionally livid with the reflected flare of vomiting molten steel. On the map, the industrial cities of Essen, Dortmund, Duisburg and Gelsenkirchen merge into each other, snagged in a mesh of motorways and tangled in the barbed wire of railway lines. Downtown, they have little architectural distinction thanks to "redevelopment" by the RAF during the Second World War, which reduced – for example – 60 per cent of Duisburg to rubble.
As a region it can hardly be described as beautiful in the conventional sense, and yet the Ruhr will be European Capital of Culture for 2010, the first industrial zone, as opposed to city, to earn that distinction. The story of its transformation from chalk to cheese demonstrates how ugly ducklings (and coal mines) can grow into beautiful swans.
What to do with ailing heavy industry has long been a hot topic in the business pages. Most European nations have clusters of mills, mines and furnaces – gaunt cathedrals to grunt and grime – either standing idle or limping along at the taxpayer's expense. In Britain we haven't been quite as badly hit by the changing marketplace, because we didn't have quite the same concentrations of heavy industry. But Germany has been brilliant at making things for the past 100 years, particularly in the Ruhr, which was the engine of German revival in the post-war years.
Coal and water were the twin pillars of the Ruhr's success. At its peak in the 1960s, no fewer than 140 coal mines were being kept busy by scores of nearby blast furnaces and steel mills, whose heavyweight products were then shipped out along the Rhine and its network of tributaries and canals. Huge quantities of imported labour were required to keep the home fires burning, with four million people moving into the area in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, originally from Italy, Spain and Portugal.
Today, however, there are only seven operational coal mines left, and those will be gone by 2018. The associated redundancy – there were 500,000 miners in 1958, while just 30,000 are left today – means that unemployment is significant, usually in the low teens (rising to 18 per cent in Gelsenkirchen). Overall, though, it's no higher than in the former East Germany and, unlike the latter, the Ruhr population has not moved away. For while the parents may be redundant factory workers or coal miners, their children can see new employment opportunities emerging in technology, in research, in medical services and even in tourism, encouraging them to stay. And some of that new enterprise is occupying the very same buildings that the heavy industry left behind.
Converting old buildings for different uses is nothing new, but a big turning point for the Ruhr's public image started in the late 1980s with something called the Internationale Bauausstellung, a European-funded project charged with identifying well-focused regenerative projects and getting them off the ground. Apart from creating employment, the idea was to bring back a sense of self-respect to the area, to make the local communities proud of what they, their parents and grandparents had helped create.
Over the space of ten years, until it was disbanded in 1999, the IBA started 120 projects and spent £1.7 billion, turning wasteland into nature reserve, slag heap into adventure park and coal mine into art gallery. It is largely thanks to the IBA that, today, you can go to an exhibition in the world's second largest gasometer; ride a big dipper in the world's most beautiful coal mine; attend a blockbuster musical in the workshop of the world's largest steelmaker; and stroll around a country park which was once an ironworks, but now hosts (amongst other things) Europe's biggest indoor diving centre.
All are linked together in an Industrial Heritage Trail, a post-industrial safari into what was once forbidden territory. Without the IBA's initiative in bringing culture and recreation to these abandoned cathedrals, the Ruhr would never have been considered for the title of Capital of Culture. The IBA came up with the concept of the game, produced the ball and the team shirts, but it has been left to the players to run the league, and so far it has proved a costly adventure.
The most high-profile and heavily subsidised of the transformed sites is the coal mine, Zeche Zollverein, near Essen. Recognised as a World Heritage site by UNESCO back in 2001, the brick-built and Bauhaus-inspired mine looks like a chateau by Frank Lloyd Wright, and hosts a collection of museums and galleries. A long walkway across a wasteland of cinders leads to the Kokerei Zollverein, where coal dust was fire-blasted into industrial carbon (coke), which burns hot enough to melt metal. Herea big dipper and a swimming pool have been set amongst the ovens and you can wander down the evacuated smoke chambers to stare up the huge chimney to the orb of daylight a giddy 300ft overhead.
Zeche Zollverein has been a big success in terms of visitor numbers – 200,000 a year – and has proved such a creative force that it has inspired the start-up of its own (private) university for design and business management in a new building on the premises. Furthermore, 100 companies employing 1,000 people rent space in its buildings, but the resultant income covers only a fraction of the cost: Zollverein's current development masterplan has a budget of E140 million, and that's leaving aside the expense of day-to-day running.
The local view is that substantial investment is necessary for a flagship project like this. "Zollverein stands for the future," says spokesperson Barbara Wendling. "Here people can see that we can manage the change from industry to leisure. Our politicians have learned to justify why so much money is spent."
Not far behind Zeche Zollverein in terms of visitor numbers, but more balanced in terms of spend, is the Gasometer at Oberhausen, now a giant 118-metre tall art gallery whose exhibitions have to be tailormade to fit. It seems that artists are queuing up to have a go at creating something that makes use of such a huge vertical space, with Reichstag-wrapper Christo one of the first. But unlike the coal mine, the Gasometer gets no subsidy; it has to cover its costs by seeking sponsorship, which it has done successfully so far.
One of the Gasometer's advantages in terms of access to visitors is its location just across the way from CentrO, Europe's largest leisure and shopping complex created on the site of a former steelworks by British developer Eddie Healey (of Sheffield's Meadowhall). CentrO's success – 23 million customers come here every year – has in turn prompted the development of two further lavish new downtown shopping malls in Duisburg and Essen, both currently under construction. It seems that investors have plenty of confidence in the region's future spending power.
Right opposite the new mall in downtown Essen is the Colosseo Theatre, another example of a self-sustaining cultural use for a former industrial site. The theatre occupies a huge rectangular building which was once Krupp's mechanical workshop, and all the original structure has been retained, even down to the gantry cranes across the roof. But encased inside it is a lavish new auditorium where top-end musicals are staged; if this is not your taste, it's worth visiting the Colosseo for the foyer alone.
Ultimately, the most varied of all these renewed sites is just outside poor RAF-ravaged Duisburg. This city hosts Europe's largest inland port, plugged into the Rhine, and here the Brits (in the shape of our very own Sir Norman Foster) have become involved in the rejuvenation of the declining inner harbour. Foster has created a unique mix of residential, recreational and cultural attractions in a pleasing revitalisation reminiscent of recent and ongoing dockland projects all over Europe.
But Duisburg's most impressive renewal is out at Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, a former ironworks with towers, gasometers, bunkers, silos, crucibles, power plants and compressor rooms, all on an immense scale.
Since its closure in 1985, the ironworks has been tarted up in parts; the gasometer has been filled with water for an indoor diving centre, the massive concrete bunkers have been turned into climbing walls, number five furnace has been dedicated to mountaineers (who have the lowest-altitude "Mountain Hut" in Europe) and an open-air cinema with a rolling roof has been inserted into furnace number one.
Outside, the buddleia has been encouraged to run wild in the parkland, and there are enough cycle tracks on the slag heaps to stage an annual 24-hour mountain bike race. And when darkness falls the whole tangled mass turns into a living, looming thing thanks to British lighting designer Jonathan Park.
Transforming the site has already cost Euros 80 million, but with all its various installations and activities the Landschaftspark's annual upkeep is manageable. It has sold off part of its land to Ikea; its Compressor Room is permanently booked solid for dinners and dances; its giant Power Station hosts opera and trade fairs; and overall income manages to cover around e1.3 million of the e4.5 million running cost. The shortfall is made up by the city and the state, which plainly consider the subsidy to be money well spent when measured in societal benefits and public profile.
In the end, what has been achieved in the Ruhr is impressive for anyone interested in architecture and community restructuring, but attracting run-of-the-mill tourists to an industrial region will be more difficult, and that's where the Capital of Culture comes in. A new organisation, Ruhr 2010, has been charged with creating the programme and doing the marketing for the culture year, with a budget of Euros 48 million.
The ambition is to showcase high culture in an industrial setting, says Ruhr 2010's Nadja Grizzo, and she acknowledges the difficulty of the task. "With 53 different mayors and municipalities, we've had to overcome a certain amount of kirchturm denken – church-tower thinking – but now everyone is working together. The first step in the process was to make locals feel positive about their environment, which has been done. Now we can show the Ruhr to the world. We want people to stand in astonishment, and say 'look at what's happened here'."
And if they can be persuaded to come, they almost certainly will.
Hotels
The Ruhr is not well supplied with top-quality hotels, although it does have plenty of business traveller accommodation. The three recommendations below are all in and around the gateway city of Essen, which has a rail connection directly into Dusseldorf airport.
THE MOVENPICK ESSEN (Am Hauptbahnhof 2, tel +49 201 17080, moevenpick-essen.com). Great location directly opposite the railway station compensates for a rather uninspiring small foyer and makes it the address of choice for many English-speaking business travellers. Pleasant rooms and a great breakfast, but the restaurant is old-fashioned and there's no fitness centre on site. Doubles from Euros 85.
Much more charismatic is the MINTROPS STADT HOTEL (Steile Strasse 46, +49 201 43860, hotel-margarethenhoehe.de) in Margarethenhohe, a garden suburb of Essen out towards the Messe exhibition centre. The hotel has a pillared portico and overlooks a handsome square with a regular market; ask for a balcony room. There's a stylish restaurant on the ground floor. Doubles from Euros 164, including breakfast.
If you want something in keeping with the surroundings, try the ALTE LOHNHALLE (Rotthauser Strasse 40, +49 201 384570, alte-lohnhalle.de) in the suburb of Essen Kray. The castellated, handsome former wages hall of a coal mine stands alongside the defunct pit-head. There's a beer garden outside and a fitness centre round the back, but inside the hotel is idiosyncratic and relatively small, with just 17 rooms distributed around a galleried hall. It's not well served by public transport, but there's easy parking if you come by car. Doubles from Euros 78, including breakfast.
Rates quoted are fully flexible, for a midweek stay in mid May, including taxes, and are room-only unless stated.
Getting There
Access to the Ruhr has become easier in recent times. The region's own airport at Dortmund (flughafen-dortmund.de) has expanded with the arrival of budget carriers such as Germanwings, which flies to Vienna and Istanbul, and Easyjet. The latter serves business cities such as London (Luton), Barcelona, Budapest, Krakow, Milan, Prague and Rome. Another arrival has been Wizzair, with service to several Polish cities including Katowice, Warsaw and Wroclaw. Within the region S-Bahn (suburban) trains operate with regular frequencies.
For more details on the Industrial Heritage Trail, visit route-industriekultur.de/menue/menue.html (information available in German and English).
