As destinations go, North Rhine-Westphalia is a rather unconventional one. This is not the Black Forest or Bavaria, with their castles, cobblestones and half-timbered villages. Instead, its heartland is a densely populated and scenically underwhelming region of factory chimneys, blast furnaces and slag heaps, known as the Ruhrgebiet. This is a region whose combination of bountiful coal seams and a generous waterway (the river Rhine) created the perfect conditions for Germany's wirtschaftswunder, the economic miracle that followed the Second World War, as steel works, chemical plants and car factories sprouted up across the region. So why does it feature in a travel magazine? The answer lies in a world-leading regeneration.
Over the last couple of decades, all the coal mines have closed, as have some of the heavy industries, but instead of leaving their sites to dereliction, creative thinking has set about repurposing what were once the afterthoughts of industry. This has included the conversion of a coal mine (Essen's Zeche Zollverein) into what is now
