Hamm audiotours

Hamm was founded in 1226 as the capital of the County of Mark and became a prosperous member of the Hanseatic League until the wars of the 17th and 18th centuries wore it down. Most of its medieval fabric was destroyed in 55 Allied air raids during World War II, making the rebuilt city largely 20th-century in character. What survived includes the 13th-century St. Paul's Church with its nearly 80-meter tower and the Art Deco central station from 1912, considered one of the most architecturally distinguished in Germany.

Hamm's most unexpected landmark is the Sri Kamadchi Ampal Temple, built by the Tamil Hindu community that settled here from the 1980s onward, now the largest Tamil-Hindu temple in Europe.

Its gopuram tower and intricate sculptural program feel genuinely startling in the Westphalian landscape. The Maximilianpark nearby contains the Glaselefant, a former coal washery converted by artist Horst Rellecke into the world's largest building shaped like an animal, complete with a glass elephant's head and trunk rising above the original industrial structure. These two landmarks alone give Hamm a quality no other city in the Ruhr region can claim.