Mulheim Audio Tours

Mulheim an der Ruhr sits between the industrial heavyweights of Duisburg and Essen in the heart of the Ruhr Valley, and it has always played a different game from its neighbors. While the surrounding cities built themselves on coal and steel, Mulheim developed a chemical and leatherette industry, and later became associated with management education through the Haniel Group and the Peter Drucker connection. The city is named for its water mills on the Ruhr River, which threads through town and gives it a character the big industrial neighbors never quite managed.

Schloss Broich, the medieval castle at the city's center, is one of the oldest surviving castle complexes in the Rhineland, with foundations from the ninth century Carolingian period.

It sits on a raised bank above the Ruhr, surrounded by a park, and its towers and walls have been incorporated rather than demolished, giving Mulheim a historic focal point that most Ruhr cities lack. The old town around the market square (Stadtmitte) retains some of its pre-war scale, and the waterfront Ruhr-Promenade is a long riverside walk that locals use constantly.