Recklinghausen

Recklinghausen hosts Europe's oldest theatre festival, and owes it to a barter of coal for art. In the freezing winter of 1946--47, Hamburg's theatres had no fuel; the miners of Recklinghausen sent coal north, and the actors came south in gratitude to perform for them — from that exchange grew the Ruhrfestspiele, held every May and June since, under the standing motto of art for the working city. The green hill above town carries the Festspielhaus, fronted by David's monumental sculpture; premieres, international guest productions and stars of stage and screen have made the festival the Ruhr's proudest annual institution, still opened each May Day with a festival of the trade unions — origins honoured.

The city's second treasure glows more quietly: the Icon Museum, the largest collection of Orthodox sacred art outside the Orthodox world — a thousand icons, Coptic textiles and Russian metalwork, gathered improbably in a Westphalian mining town and displayed with scholarly devotion beside the Petruskirche.

Around these two poles, Recklinghausen lives its post-mining life as the Vest's old capital: the engraving of centuries in the propsteikirche's quarter, the moated palaces of the countryside, and the Halde Hoheward's horizon observatory crowning the spoil heaps — astronomy on coal's shoulders. Art for coal proved a durable exchange rate: Recklinghausen has been collecting the dividends for eight decades.