Every design for Grevenbroich

Grevenbroich is the town whose river is warm enough for piranhas. Cooling water from the power stations keeps the Erft from dropping below 10 °C even in winter, and anglers have hooked the South American fish here more than once. It is also the town Hape Kerkeling gave to his comic persona Horst Schlämmer, which made its name known far beyond the Rhineland.

For the people who live here, though, Grevenbroich is above all the Erft itself, flowing through the town for 20 kilometres past woods, meadows and fields on its way to Neuss and the Rhine. It is the climb up the Vollrather Höhe, a hill of mining spoil now grown green, and the memory of the Frimmersdorf Power Station, once one of Europe's least carbon-efficient, which finally shut down in 2021. It is a landscape shaped by lignite, between Düsseldorf, Cologne and Mönchengladbach.

Back in the centre, the Altes Schloß, the Villa Erckens and the church of Peter und Paul hold the older town together, and whichever of the many villages you come from, they are where Grevenbroich feels like home.