Every design for Dormagen

Dormagen is best known for its chemical works, the Bayer plant and Covestro, but its story begins almost two thousand years earlier as the Roman Durnomagus, a name of Celtic origin that means something like "gravel field". Long before the Romans, Bronze Age people raised burial mounds in the Chorbusch near Hackenbroich, and the main street through the old centre, the Kölner Straße, still follows the line of a Roman road.

For people who grew up here, Dormagen is a string of places along the left bank of the Rhine: Zons, Stürzelberg, Nievenheim, Horrem, Delhoven and the rest, sixteen subdivisions in all, with Düsseldorf to the north and Cologne to the south. It is the smell of the river, Sunday walks through the Rheinaue Zons-Rheinfeld und Altrheinschlinge Zons, and rainy afternoons at the Internationales Phono & Radio Museum.

On a clear day, stand on the riverbank and look east past Monheim, and you can see all the way to the hills of the Bergisches Land.