Zeche Zollverein

UNESCO World Heritage Site: Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex (2001); The Bauhaus Influenced Shaft XII Of 1932, Closed 1986, Now The Ruhr Museum, The Red Dot Design Museum And A Winter Ice Rink In The Coking Plant · Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia

Zollverein in northern Essen was once the largest and most productive coal mine in Europe, and is routinely called the most beautiful industrial building in the world. That claim is about one specific thing: Shaft XII, designed by Fritz Schupp and Martin Kremmer and opened in 1932, a set of cubic steel-framed halls laid out on a strict grid under a red double-trestle winding tower that has become the emblem of the whole Ruhr. It worked until 1986 and, unusually, was not cleared away: the washery, the conveyor bridges, the machinery and the vast coking plant of the late 1950s next door all still stand, and the complex became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001. The coal washery now holds the Ruhr Museum, entered up a long orange escalator; the former boiler house, converted by Norman Foster, holds the Red Dot Design Museum; and the coking plant carries a summer swimming pool and a winter ice track between its ovens. Most of the roughly 100-hectare site is free to walk at any hour, and birch woodland has seeded itself across the old sidings.

Gelsenkirchener Strasse 181, northern Essen, in the middle of the Ruhr, Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

The grounds, the paths between the buildings and the outdoor routes are open and free at all hours, lit at night, and walking them after dark when the winding tower is illuminated is one of the better things to do here. The museums keep their own hours: the Ruhr Museum and the Red Dot museum are generally open daily from mid-morning to early evening with the usual closures on 24, 25 and 31 December - confirm, and confirm whether either takes a weekly closing day. Guided Monument Path tours of the washery and the coking plant run at set times, more often at weekends and in summer. The ice track runs roughly from early December to early January and the pool in July and August - confirm both.

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