"The beauty of the po ..." a Gelsenkirchen Travel Page by diocletianvs

Gelsenkirchen is not the place most people would include in their tourist visit to Germany. When I asked my German friends about this place, their comments were something like "This is not the ugliest and the most boring place in Germany, but it is very close".

I visited Gelsenkirchen in 2005 as part of our Tour of the Ruhr region. The fact that Gelsenkirchen was located almost in the center of the region made us decide to stay here during our visit.

Once known as the "Town of Thousand Fires", Gelsenkirchen developed fast in the 19th century around coal industry, and was for long the leading coal producer in the region. Strategically important during the World War II it was almost completely destroyed by Allied bombs. Post-war reconstruction was not the most creative one - it was efficient and fast.

The post-industrial era reconstruction on the other hand was definitely more creative. One of the most important projects for the 1990s IBA Emscher park was the transformation of the Nordstern colliery into a large landscape park. This was our main point of interest here, but we also visited some other sites as well as the famous Gelsenkirchen arena/stadium. (To a big surprise of my friends when I suggested this visit, but it was all for the architectural reasons of course!).

Gelsenkirchen today is rapidly changing its image from dirty industrial town to a dynamic place centred around new science parks. It is the leading German center for the use of solar energy.