If someone had told me 2 weeks ago that I would spend 4 hours at a defunct industrial site and enjoy the heck of out while taking 299 photos (I promise only a fraction of those are shared here), I would not have believed it.
But that’s exactly what I did last weekend when we visited the Völklingen Ironworks, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Völklingen, Germany.
The ironworks were in operation for just over 100 years until they closed in 1986. They became a UNESCO site in 1994, so this year is the 20th anniversary. The ironworks were the first industrial monument on the World Heritage list.
When you drive into town, you can’t help but notice the ironworks that tower over it. They cover almost 15 acres of land. At one point, the plant employed over 17,000 workers who worked three shifts around-the-clock.
It is a little pricey to visit the site at 12 Euro per adult, but it’s totally worth it.
After buying your ticket, you do a self-guided walk around the grounds by following little arrows on the ground. You can pick up a free brochure in various languages before you buy your ticket and there are also descriptive signs in English all around the ironworks. There are 7 “zones” that you tour.
The first zone is the sintering plant. I will freely admit that I don’t understand the entire iron-making process, but will try to give some simple explanations of the purpose of each of the 7 zones.
The sintering plant mixed iron ore dust with other materials in order to form a more lumpy, useable product. The reason for this is that it would be next to impossible to pour the dust into the blasting furnaces, which you’ll read about later, so mixing it with other materials enables it to more easily be poured into the furnaces. The dust was mixed with the other materials at temperatures of over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Part of the railway system can also be seen in this zone. It was used to transport materials.
By the way, the descriptive signs for each zone were amusing. The sintering plant is “Gate to the wonder world of the ironworks.”
The next zone was the ore shed, “Treasure chamber of brown gold”. This is where the ore was stored.
Zone 3 was the burden shed, “The greedy belly of the ironworks”. This is where raw material was loaded into the cars you will see in photos below and was taken up to the blast furnaces.
I just loved all the different shapes and curves and lines and materials and colors that you see throughout the plant.
When we saw this next thing, Sean said “That’s the biggest gate valve I’ve ever seen!”
I said “I know, me too!” (That was sarcasm in case you couldn’t tell. I wouldn’t know a gate valve from a duckbill valve. That’s sarcasm too because I never even heard of a duckbill valve until just now. I came across the term when I was looking up what a gate valve is.)
This plaque memorializes a sad event.
13 people died in a blast furnace explosion in 1928. I can’t imagine how brutal the working conditions must have been in this place.
Before moving on to Zone 4, we had to put on hardhats.
Here is Sean in his little hardhat, turning a water wheel.
Exploring this zone involved walking up a lot of stairs.
This was just one little section of them. I tried counting them on the way down and I came up with somewhere around 215. If you’re going to visit this site and explore it fully, just be aware that you will be walking up and down hundreds of stairs in the process.
Here is one of the views from partway up the stairs.
The two little mountains you see in the back are actually slagheaps formed from the waste of the iron-making process. They are named Hermann and Dorothea. Hermann Röchling’s father Carl purchased the ironworks in 1881, and Dorothea was Hermann’s wife. Hermann was imprisoned for war crimes – including forced labor – after both world wars. After the second imprisonment, he never returned to his homeland, where the ironworks are located, again.
I told Sean that “slagheap” sounds like a pretty good insult. I may start using it.
Back to Zone 4, which is the blast furnace group or “Fire breathing giants of iron smelting”. The furnaces were filled with the ore and hot air was blasted into them to produce molten metal. The temperatures in the furnaces could reach almost 4,000 (yes, four thousand) degrees Fahrenheit.
Here you see the giant lid of one of the furnaces.
And some more photos from Zone 4.
Notice the weeds growing through the structure on that last photo. One of the signs later on in the walk stated that “nature is stronger than concrete and steel”.
This photo was taken from the top of all the stairs we climbed.
You can see how tiny the cars in the parking lot look, so that gives you an idea of how high we climbed.
And here I am wearing my hardhat at a jaunty angle.
You can also see that I have on a hairnet, which they nicely provided for free because you never know where those hardhats have been.
I thought this looked like a giant leg wearing a ski boot.
We then moved on to Zone 5, the coking plant, described as “From the black hell into paradise”. At temperatures of about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, this is where coal was turned into a fuel called coke. The fuel was used in the blasting furnace and served to reduce oxidation in the iron product.
“Paradise” refers to the fact that the area is now landscaped with grass as well as various trees and plants, and has lots of butterflies and plenty of benches where you can sit and quietly enjoy the scenery. There are also some urban art displays in this area. (Side note: The German word for butterfly is Schmetterling, and it’s one of my favorite German words.)
Zone 6 was the coal track and Ferrodrom, aka “The fantastic cosmos of iron and steel”. The coal track is where the coal was brought to the coking plant mentioned earlier.
This structure is referred to as an “inclined ore lift” in the brochure, which also says it is unique worldwide.
The Ferrodrom is a science center with hands-on exhibits relating to iron and steel production.
We didn’t see most of it due to lack of time, but here’s Sean playing around in part of it.
(The room had a weird orange glow to it as you can see.)
When I took this next photo, Sean exclaimed “You’re taking a photo of a TRAIN???”
As you might guess, he is normally much more interested in trains than I am. My response was “It has pretty colors”.
The last zone was the blower shed or “Steel lungs of the ironworks”.
You actually walk through this section first after buying your ticket, and you walk through it again on your way out.
These are the blowers that generated the hot air for the blast furnaces that you read about earlier. The brochure describes these as being unique worldwide as well.
I really had such a good time walking around here and am still surprised that I did. We got there just after they opened on a Friday morning and we saw hardly any other people the whole time we were there. Weekends may be more crowded. We did see a couple of school groups, but they were having lunch in the picnic area when we saw (and heard) them. I mentioned the ironworks to several friends when I went back to work on Monday. Nobody had ever heard of the place, including my German co-workers, so I think it’s a well-kept secret.
I just cannot imagine being allowed to do anything like this in the United States. There’s no way they’d accept the liability of letting people walk around a site like this, which is a shame because it was both fun and educational.
Which well-kept secrets have you visited in your travels? Share them here – I won’t tell!
