Dortmund audiotours

Dortmund was once the largest beer-exporting city in the world and the dominant industrial heart of the Ruhr, with coal mines and steel furnaces running round the clock. Both are gone now, and what has replaced them is a city working out its identity with more success than most post-industrial cities manage. The harbour district, the Phoenixsee lake created on the site of the former Phoenix steel works, and the U-Tower, a former Union brewery converted into an arts centre, are all part of an ongoing transformation that is earnest and genuinely interesting rather than cosmetic.

Borussia Dortmund is the emotional centre of the city in a way that very few football clubs are the centre of anywhere.

Signal Iduna Park holds over 81,000 people and has the largest standing terrace in European football, the Sudtribune, which turns a distinctive yellow for home games and generates a noise that has to be heard to be believed. The club's identity is inseparable from the working-class history of the Ruhr, and the supporters know it. Even if you are not a football supporter, the stadium on a match day is a cultural event worth attending.