Every design for Lüdenscheid

Lüdenscheid sits on a saddle in the north-west of the Sauerland, right on the watershed between the Lenne and the Volme. Its oldest streets circle a church set on a ledge above that saddle, and from any of the valleys below it is easy to see why the town is called the Bergstadt, the mountain town. A village was first recorded here in 1067 and a town in 1268, and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Lüdenscheid traded its iron goods as a member of the Hanseatic League.

The Geschichtsmuseum + Städtische Galerie der Stadt Lüdenscheid is the place to follow that story further: osmond iron mined in the surrounding hills, worked by hammers and wire drawers powered by the streams, then the buttons and buckles of the industrial age, then aluminium, bakelite and plastics. In 1898 the aluminium framework of the very first Zeppelin airship was built in Carl Berg's factory here, and the lamp makers later earned the town a second nickname, Stadt des Lichts. Schloss Neuenhof and the Phänomenta Lüdenscheid add their own chapters; since 1975 the town has been the seat of the Märkischer Kreis.

Small and medium-sized firms still make car parts, lighting and toys here. Stand on the Homert to the south and the whole town lies before you, its houses settled into the shallow hollow between the hills.