Bochum Audio Tours

Charlemagne established a royal court in Bochum in the 9th century. The city grew slowly: when the coal and steel industries arrived in the mid-19th century, fewer than 5,000 people lived here. By 1904 the population had crossed 100,000. Allied bombing in 150 raids during World War II destroyed 83 percent of the built-up area, killed at least 4,000 people, and left 70,000 homeless. By the time the war ended, only 1,000 of more than 90,000 homes remained undamaged. The rebuilding that followed was functional rather than beautiful, which is why Bochum looks the way it looks.

Starlight Express, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical staged on roller skates, opened in Bochum in 1988 and has never stopped.

It is the longest-running musical in Germany and one of the longest-running in the world, staged in a purpose-built arena that is still drawing audiences decades later. The German Mining Museum in the city centre has a working pithead tower above it that you can see from across the district. The Ruhr University Bochum, founded in 1965, is one of the ten largest universities in Germany. The Bermudadreieck nightlife district, named with some irony, contains around sixty bars and restaurants in a street pattern from which it is apparently easy to lose your evening.