Things to do in Dortmund

Landmark · Westfalendamm / Strobelallee

Germany's largest football stadium, opened in 1974 and holding 81,365 — its south stand is the largest standing terrace in European football.

Local tip: League tickets are close to impossible without a member's help; the stadium tour is not, and it puts you on the Südtribüne when it is empty, which is the only way to grasp the scale. If you do get a Südtribüne ticket, you stand for ninety minutes and you do not sit down.

Nature · Hörde

A 24-hectare lake in the middle of the city, flooded in 2010–11 directly on top of the Hoesch Phoenix-Ost steelworks that stood there until 2001.

Local tip: Walk the north bank for the promenade and restaurants, the south bank for the quiet. Then look up at the Hörde Burg and the old Hochofen structures on the ridge — the point of the place is that the water is where the furnaces were, and it is only forty years old as an idea.

Culture · City centre, west

The 1926 Union brewery's fermentation tower, its rooftop U visible across the city, converted into an arts and media centre in 2010.

Local tip: The Ostwall museum collection is on floors four and five and is genuinely good on Expressionism and Fluxus. Go up to the top-floor terrace regardless — it is the best free view of the city, and it explains the geography better than any map.

Neighborhood · South-west of the centre

The city's Wilhelminian quarter — bars, small shops and the student and academic population, between the Westpark and the Westfalenpark.

Local tip: This is where Dortmund actually goes out, and it is quieter and cheaper than the equivalent in Cologne. Vinzenzstraße and the streets off the Kreuzstraße are where to eat; on the Westpark in summer the whole neighbourhood sits on the grass.

Nature · South of the centre

A 70-hectare park laid out for the 1959 federal garden show, with the 209-metre Florianturm built for it and still standing.

Local tip: The German Rose Garden inside it holds thousands of varieties and almost no visitor knows it is there. Take the chairlift over the park rather than walking in — it is a strange, faintly 1959 experience and it costs almost nothing.

Culture · Bövinghausen, far west

A colliery built as a showpiece in 1898–1904, whose Art Nouveau machine hall was listed in 1969 in what is generally regarded as the founding case of industrial heritage protection in Germany.

Local tip: The glass-and-steel machine hall entrance is the single most beautiful industrial object in the Ruhr and hardly anybody outside the region has heard of it. It is a long way west — take the S-Bahn to Lütgendortmund or the bus — and it is worth the trip in a way the more famous sites sometimes are not.