Dortmund Self-Guided Walking Audio Tour

Dortmund on foot, from the brewery tower to the city park

10 stops · about 42 min walking · start: Dortmunder U · finish: Stadtgarten

The walk starts at the Dortmunder U, passes the German Football Museum opposite the main station and the Art Deco Museum of Art and Cultural History, and reaches the Konzerthaus in the Brückstraße quarter. In the old town come St Reinold's Church and the Propsteikirche, then the Platz von Hiroshima and the neo-Renaissance Altes Stadthaus. The Adlerturm stands on the line of the medieval wall, and the Stadtgarten on the southern edge of the old town is the last stop. You can start anywhere in the app, and no stop charges admission.

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1. 

   1Dortmunder UStart

   This tall brick building was built in the 1920s as a high-rise for the Union brewery, and the golden illuminated U on its roof was added in 1968. Since 2010 it has been a centre for art and creativity and home to the Museum Ostwall. Look up at the roof, where moving images by the film-maker Adolf Winkelmann light up after dark.

2. 

   2German Football Museum

   Germany's national football museum, run by the German Football Association (DFB), opened in 2015 directly opposite Dortmund's main station. Its exhibitions cover trophies, famous matches and the history of the game in Germany, which suits a city known far beyond its borders for Borussia Dortmund.

3. 

   3Museum of Art and Cultural History

   The museum occupies an Art Deco building from the 1920s that was originally built for the city savings bank. Its collections trace the history of Dortmund and its region from early times to the 20th century, together with paintings, furniture and design. Take a look at the clean, geometric lines of the façade.

4. 

   4Konzerthaus Dortmund

   Dortmund's concert hall opened in 2002 in the Brückstraße quarter and has about 1,500 seats. Its glass front glows in the evening, and its emblem is a rhinoceros with wings, a symbol of the hall's strength and lightness.

5. 

   5St Reinold's Church

   This Protestant church is named after Dortmund's patron saint and is one of the oldest in the city, with a Romanesque nave from the 13th century and a late Gothic choir. According to legend, the cart carrying Reinold's body rolled on its own from Cologne to Dortmund and stopped where the church now stands.

6. 

   6Propsteikirche St. Johann Baptist

   The main Catholic church of the city centre was built in the 14th and 15th centuries as the church of a Dominican friary. In keeping with the simple style of the Dominicans, it has no tall tower. Inside is a large late 15th-century altarpiece by the painter Derick Baegert.

7. 

   7Platz von Hiroshima

   This small square is named after the Japanese city of Hiroshima, destroyed by an atomic bomb in August 1945. A sculpture here, known as Mutter Hiroshima (Mother Hiroshima), remembers the victims and stands as a call for peace.

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8. 

   8Altes Stadthaus

   The Old Town House was built at the end of the 19th century in neo-Renaissance style to give the growing city administration more space. Its decorated façade with gables and ornaments is one of the few reminders of that period in a centre largely destroyed by bombing in the Second World War.

9. 

   9Adlerturm

   The Adlerturm, or Eagle Tower, was rebuilt in 1992 on the foundations of a tower of Dortmund's medieval city wall. Inside, a museum shows the fortifications and daily life in the medieval Hanseatic and imperial city. The ring road around the centre, known as the Wall, still follows the line of the old walls.

10. 

    10StadtgartenFinish

    The City Garden is a green park on the southern edge of the old town, next to the buildings of the city administration. Its lawns and old trees offer a quiet break from the shopping streets, and the Stadtgarten station beneath it is one of the main junctions of Dortmund's light rail network.