Dortmund

Likely laid out as early as the 9th century, the Alter Markt was Dortmund's medieval civic heart, ringed by the guild and merchant houses of a Hanseatic trading city, with the Dortmunder Kronen brewery documented here since 1430. The old Gothic town hall — once the oldest secular building north of the Alps — stood here until war damage forced its demolition in 1955; a long-running local debate over reconstructing it, at the adjoining Friedensplatz, has run on and off for decades. The 1901 Bläserbrunnen (Trumpeter's Fountain) marks the square's northeast corner today.

Free

Dedicated to St. Reinold, the city's patron saint, this is Dortmund's oldest church, with Romanesque origins in the 13th century and a later Gothic choir and Baroque-influenced tower rebuilt after heavy WWII damage. A 207-step climb leads to a bell-tower viewing platform roughly 104m up with a wide view over the city center — a genuinely unusual feature for a working parish church.

Free entry to the nave (donations welcomed); the tower/viewing-platform climb runs on its own limited schedule — confirm current access before planning a visit around it

A parish church on Westenhellweg whose main draw is the 'Golden Miracle of Westphalia' — a monumental 1521 Antwerp retable roughly 5.65m tall and 7.40m wide when fully opened, believed to be the largest surviving altarpiece of its kind. Following the liturgical calendar, the altar is opened to show different carved and gilded scenes through the church year and closed in summer to show only its painted outer panels, so what you'll actually see depends on when you visit.

Free (donations welcomed)

Founded in 1331 as the abbey church of a Dominican monastery and consecrated in 1354, the church was expanded into a Gothic hall church between 1404 and 1458. Its late-Gothic high altar by Derick Baegert includes the oldest surviving depiction of the city of Dortmund. Destroyed in WWII, it was rebuilt through the late 1940s to mid-1960s with a distinctive steel bell tower added in 1954, and its 1988 organ now makes it a regular concert venue.

Free

The seat of Dortmund's municipal government sits on Friedensplatz, a central event square that has also been the focus of a long-running, on-and-off local debate about reconstructing the historic Altes Rathaus (demolished in 1955) nearby. Worth a quick look for the architecture and as a central landmark rather than as an interior visit — it's a working municipal building, not a museum.

Exterior/square free; interior is not generally open to casual visitors

A dense, largely Gründerzeit-era residential grid near Westfalenpark, known for independent shops, wine bars, and a lively but low-key cafe culture — Dortmund's closest equivalent to Cologne's Belgisches Viertel.

Free

Historically shaped by coal, steel, and successive waves of immigration, Nordstadt remains the largest contiguous Gründerzeit quarter in North Rhine-Westphalia. At Borsigplatz, a group of young parishioners founded Ballspielverein Borussia in 1909 — the club now known as BVB — commemorated today near the renamed Franz-Jacobi-Platz and treated as something of a pilgrimage site by football fans. It's a grittier, more lived-in side of the city than the polished center.

Free

Phoenix-West was one of the Ruhr's major steelworks until it closed in 1998 and its blast furnace was, notoriously, sold and shipped to China rather than scrapped — the site has since been reinvented as a cultural and business quarter around its preserved industrial shell. The Skywalk tour leads small guided groups up onto the former blast-furnace gas pipeline walkways, well above ground level, for a close-up look at the surviving ironwork and sweeping views over Dortmund and the Phoenix-West grounds, with guides explaining the plant's history and the district's transformation along the way. It's a booked experience, not a walk-in attraction — regular public tours run seasonally (roughly 60-100 minutes depending on the version chosen), departing from the Phoenix des Lumières forecourt, and are best combined with a stroll around Phoenix See or a visit to the Phoenix des Lumières digital art venue on the same site.

From about €19.90 (60-min version) to €23.90-26.90 (standard/morning/evening tours), including a VRR public-transport combo ticket

The original Adlerturm was part of Dortmund's medieval fortifications; destroyed and lost for decades, it was rebuilt on its historic site in the 1990s and now houses a free children's museum on medieval town life, with interactive stations, replica armor, and hands-on exhibits aimed squarely at kids rather than a conventional walk-through collection.

Free

Opened in 2015 at Platz der Deutschen Einheit 1, right across from the main train station, this is Germany's official football museum: around 1,600 exhibits and roughly 25 hours of film across 3,300 square meters tracing the national team's history, including its World Cup triumphs, alongside interactive stations like penalty-kick and commentary simulators.

Adult standard ticket for the permanent exhibition is around €19; reduced pricing for children under 14, students under 26, and visitors with a disability rating of 70%+; under-6s free. Combo tickets bundling other add-ons are also sold, so double-check exactly what a listed price includes before buying.

Built in 1926–27 as a fermentation and storage tower for the Union brewery, the building was reimagined as a museum and creative center for Ruhr.2010 European Capital of Culture, keeping its landmark rotating 'U' sign on the roof. It now houses Museum Ostwall's modern and contemporary art collection across several floors, TU Dortmund university art/media collections, a cinema, and a free public viewing level near the top with panoramic city views.

Museum Ostwall's permanent collection is free to enter; some temporary exhibitions in the building charge separate admission — check the current program

Founded in 1883, the MKK holds paintings, sculpture, furniture and applied art tracing Dortmund's cultural history from early settlement through the 20th century, housed today in a former Art Deco savings-bank building in the city center.

Check the museum's current listing for adult/reduced admission

A working colliery from the 1890s, Zeche Zollern is best known for its striking Art Nouveau-style engine hall (Maschinenhalle), with an ornamented wrought-iron portal that earned the site the nickname 'Schloss der Arbeit' (castle of labor). Preserved as an anchor site on the Route der Industriekultur, it's now an open-air LWL museum on Ruhr coal-mining history, with original machinery and pit-head buildings to explore.

Adult €8, reduced €4; groups of 16+ €7/person; under-18s and school classes in class groups free

A former coal-coking plant that shut down in the 1990s, Kokerei Hansa is now preserved as a protected industrial monument and anchor site on the Route der Industriekultur — rusted towers, ovens, and catwalks left largely as they were. Visitors can explore self-guided or join scheduled guided tours, including a dedicated child-friendly discovery tour.

Free admission

Known for a particularly strong South American animal collection, Zoo Dortmund is home to around 1,500 animals across roughly 240 species and draws over 500,000 visitors a year, sitting just south of Westfalenpark.

Single-day adult pricing not confirmed with high confidence at time of writing — commonly cited around €11 in recent seasons; annual passes run €52 adult / €28 reduced, which gives a rough sense of scale. Check the official site for the current day-ticket rate.

Laid out for the 1959 Bundesgartenschau horticultural show and expanded for later shows, Westfalenpark is Dortmund's largest central green space, with rose gardens, open lawns, and a German Rose Route terminus. Its centerpiece is the Florianturm, a telecommunications tower roughly 220m tall (including antenna) built in 1959, with a public observation deck around the 140m mark reached by a roughly 40-second elevator ride, plus a rotating restaurant a few floors below the deck.

Park entry roughly €3.50–4 adult (best confirmed on-site or via dortmund.de); the Florianturm ascent is ticketed separately, around €10 adult / €8 child (6+); annual passes also available

One of Germany's larger botanical gardens, laid out around the grounds of the historic Rombergpark estate, with free admission, extensive themed plantings, and seasonal show/glasshouses. Two on-site restaurants make it easy to combine with a longer visit.

Free (garden); show/glasshouses may have separate seasonal access)

A 63-hectare park laid out between 1899 and 1906 to a design by former Berlin Zoo director Hermann Geitner, once home to the Lunapark amusement grounds from 1908. Today it's a mixed leisure park with a rose garden, playgrounds, beach volleyball courts, boat rental, and the 35m-high 'Big Tipi' adventure climbing tent as its headline attraction.

Park entry free; the Big Tipi and boat rentals are charged separately — check current pricing locally

For about 160 years the Phoenix steelworks stood on this site in the Hörde district; after the plant closed in 2001, the land was remediated and excavated, and the lake was flooded starting in October 2010, completing in 2011. The roughly 24-hectare lake is now ringed by restaurants, cafes and new housing, doubles as a flood-retention basin, and is one of the clearest visible symbols of the Ruhr region's post-industrial reinvention.

Free (public lakeside path; individual cafes/restaurants charge normally)

Ruins on the Syberg hill (about 244m) date back to roughly 700 AD, overlooking the confluence of the Ruhr and Lenne rivers and the Hengsteysee reservoir. The 26m neo-Gothic Vincketurm was built in 1857 in honor of Westphalia's then-governor Ludwig von Vincke, damaged in WWII, restored by 1955, and today owned along with the ruins and a Kaiser Wilhelm memorial by the LWL regional association.

Castle ruins and Kaiser Wilhelm memorial free and open to the public; Vincke Tower climb roughly €2 adult

Once a municipal landfill for the Hansa coal mine, closed in 1992 and replanted with some 150,000 trees from 1997 onward, the Deusenberg now rises about 50m over the Emscher valley in Dortmund's northwest as one of the Ruhr region's classic reclaimed-industrial-landscape walks. From the grassy summit, on a clear day you can pick out landmarks across the city — the Dortmunder U, the Westfalenstadion, and the RWE Tower among them. The slopes also host a solar park, an EDG mountain-bike arena with three graded trails, and a stretch of the long-distance Emscherweg cycling route, making it a genuine outdoor destination rather than just a photo stop, and it pairs naturally with a visit to the nearby Kokerei Hansa coking plant.

Free

Home to Borussia Dortmund since 1974 and Germany's largest football stadium, with an official capacity around 81,000 that includes the Südtribüne — the 'Yellow Wall,' a single-tier standing terrace holding roughly 24,000 fans and famous across European football for its noise and scale. Visitors can walk a self-guided marked route (Stadium Walk) or join a guided Stadium Tour through the players' tunnel, dugouts, and VIP areas, and the adjoining Borusseum club museum covers the team's history and trophy room, including its Champions League and Bundesliga silverware.

Self-guided Stadium Walk roughly €14 adult; guided Stadium Tour and Borusseum museum ticketed separately, with combo tickets around €18 adult / €12 reduced and a family Borusseum ticket around €27 — pricing tiers and matchday availability change often, so confirm current options on the official site