Every design for Gelsenkirchen

Schalke 04 is the name most people outside the Ruhr connect with Gelsenkirchen. The club is named after the Schalke district, although its stadium, the Veltins-Arena, stands in Erle. Before football it was coal: in the early twentieth century this was the most important coal-mining town in Europe, nicknamed the 'city of a thousand fires' after the gas flares that lit up its nights. The last mines have closed, and the city has spent decades looking for new work to replace them.

Gelsenkirchen sits at the centre of the Ruhr, on the Emscher and the Rhine–Herne Canal, bordered by Essen, Bochum and Herne. North of the water lie Buer and Horst; south of it is the old core. Mining made much of the ground sink below the river, so it has to be pumped dry, yet a quarter of the city is woodland and farmland, with green spaces such as the Revierpark Nienhausen, the Halde Rheinelbe and the Mechtenberg.

If you grew up here, the map is full of pits that fell silent, of spoil heaps turned green, and of the Himmelstreppe looking out over it all.