Every design for Ahlen

Ahlen's coat of arms shows an eel wearing a crown and feathers, and nobody can quite say why. The name, first recorded around 850 in the Vita Liudgeri, means eels, but the reason behind it has been lost. The town grew up at a crossing over the river Werse, where the roads from Hamm to Warendorf and from Beckum to Herbern met. Its merchants did business as far away as Lübeck, it belonged to the Hanse, and by about 1285 it had grown so quickly that a second parish, St. Marien, was founded beside the old church of St. Bartholomäus.

For people who grew up here, belonging is closer to home than the history books. It is the town centre and the farming communities around it, Borbein, Brockhausen, Ester and Halene, and the outlying villages of Dolberg, Vorhelm and Tönnishäuschen. Ahlen is the largest and most important town in the Warendorf district, yet it remains unmistakably Münsterland.

And it is the Kunstmuseum Ahlen and the Fritz-Winter-Haus, which give the town a proper place on the art map. Wear that, and anyone from Aulen will know exactly where you come from.