Explore North Rhine-Westphalia
Around 40km northeast of Cologne in the hilly Bergisches Land, WUPPERTAL is not so much a city as an amalgam of towns strung out along the narrow, wooded valley of the River Wupper; they united in 1929 and shortly afterwards adopted the name Wuppertal. Known internationally for its unique suspended-monorail system, the Schwebebahn, and for the Tanztheater Pina Bausch – one of the world’s most renowned modern dance troupes – it’s also the place where aspirin was invented, and was a major centre of the German textile industry. Despite some down-at-heel stretches Wuppertal is redeemed by its hilly, leafy site and by the survival of a large number of buildings from its nineteenth-century heyday, particularly in Elberfeld, which is the larger and more attractive of the two main centres, the other being Barmen, a little to the east.
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Wuppertal’s swinging railway
Wuppertal’s swinging railway
The Schwebebahn system – suspended from massive girders above the course of the River Wupper – was an ingenious solution to the problem of providing a rapid-transit system in an extremely narrow valley where space was at a premium. The idea of Cologne engineer Eugen Langen, it was built in the 1890s. Kaiser Wilhelm II took the inaugural ride in 1900 and the system opened to the public a few months afterwards. It takes some getting used to, as the trains are noisy and sway from side to side in slightly disconcerting fashion, but the Schwebebahn has a good safety record, and on weekend afternoons you can take a “Kaffeefahrt” on one of the original 1900 trains, departing from Vohwinkel station.
