Duisburg Audioguides

Duisburg was first documented in 883 as Diusburh, a Frankish settlement at the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr rivers. It briefly joined the Hanseatic League, then lost its trading prominence when the Rhine shifted course westward around the year 1000, moving away from the town and leaving it temporarily marginal. Industrialisation brought it back with force: by 1904 the population reached 100,000, and by the mid-20th century Duisburg was one of the most intensely industrial cities in Germany, which is saying something for a country that built much of its identity on precisely that.

On July 25, 2019, Duisburg recorded 41.

2 degrees Celsius, the highest temperature ever measured in Germany. This is an unlikely distinction for a city more associated with steel and shipping than with heat. The port today is the largest inland port in Europe, handling 40 million tonnes of goods annually, and since 2011 it has been the western terminus for the New Silk Road freight rail from China. The containers moving through Duisburg's port connect it directly to Chongqing, Wuhan, Chengdu, and a dozen other Chinese cities in ways that the medieval Rhine traders might have found incomprehensible.