Every design for Mülheim An Der Ruhr

At Mülheim the Ruhr leaves the last foothills of the Rhenish Massif and runs out onto the lowlands of the Lower Rhine, having cut more than fifty metres into the rock on the way. That erosion laid bare the coal seams along the Kahlenberg slope and gave the town its mining past.

So much of Mülheim is green that the city feels restful – parkland and forest cover more than half of it, and the river runs straight through the centre rather than skirting it, which is why it is also called the City on the River. Walks lead along the banks to the Wasserbahnhof, up to Schloss Broich, the castle of the lords with whom the town first appears in the records, or out to Kloster Saarn and Schloss Styrum. The broad floodplain at Styrum, with its old river arms, already looks like the Lower Rhine.

Picture the Mülheimer Pforte: Broich on the left bank, the church hill on the right, and the Ruhr squeezing between them out of the hills and into the plain.