Where to Stay in Recklinghausen, Nordrhein-Westfalen

What is Recklinghausen known for?

The Icon Museum Recklinghausen, the Museum Jerke and the Städtische Kunsthalle Recklinghausen give one town three separate exhibition houses, and they sit alongside a district administration that runs the whole Recklinghausen district from here. The old town came through relatively well preserved. Tierpark Recklinghausen carries the family end of the list, and the Gastkirche and the Gymnasialkirche carry the church end.

What are the main landmarks in Recklinghausen?

Nothing on the list outnumbers the churches. The Gastkirche, the Gymnasialkirche, the Pauluskirche Recklinghausen and the Gustav-Adolf-Kirche Recklinghausen sit on a list that runs to seven church buildings, which is what a town of this age accumulates over a thousand years. Three exhibition houses balance them.

The Icon Museum Recklinghausen, the Museum Jerke and the Städtische Kunsthalle Recklinghausen take the art side, while the Tierpark Recklinghausen and the Retro Station Recklinghausen are the two entries aimed squarely at a family afternoon.

What is the history of Recklinghausen?

The record starts in 1017. Recklinghausen carried a date and a name long before industry reached the ground south of it, and that order of events shows in an old town that survives on older lines than the works around it. Seven church buildings accumulated.

The Gastkirche and the Gymnasialkirche belong to the older stock, while the Pauluskirche Recklinghausen and the Gustav-Adolf-Kirche Recklinghausen carry names from a later phase of building. Industry came from the south. The Ruhr grew up against the lower edge of the town while the fields and farms of Münsterland held the other side, and Recklinghausen ended as the last city of the one and the first neighbour of the other.

The district carries the town's name. Recklinghausen heads the Recklinghausen district, and that role kept the administration in the same streets the old town had already laid out. The twentieth century left its own marks.

Das Ganze und die Teile stands as the memorial to the Jewish victims of Fascism in Recklinghausen, and the Icon Museum Recklinghausen, the Museum Jerke and the Städtische Kunsthalle Recklinghausen were added to an inventory that had been almost entirely churches.

Where is Recklinghausen?

The Ruhr stops at Recklinghausen. Sixty-six square kilometres take in fields and farms at the upper end and industry at the lower, so the city touches Münsterland on one side and the rest of the Ruhr on the other. Nordrhein-Westfalen is the state above it, and the Recklinghausen district takes in the smaller places spread around the city.

What is the climate of Recklinghausen?

The Münsterland farmland lets the weather in. Nothing between Recklinghausen and those open fields slows the wind, and winters run grey and wet across the whole district rather than settling on one part of it. Summers stay moderate.

The Icon Museum Recklinghausen, the Museum Jerke and the Städtische Kunsthalle Recklinghausen cover the wet afternoons that a temperate year in the Ruhr guarantees.

How do you get to Recklinghausen?

The Ruhr brings most arrivals. Recklinghausen stands at the far end of that built-up belt, and anyone coming from the other Ruhr cities crosses the industrial side of the municipality before the old streets appear. Münsterland is the other approach.

The farm roads from that side come in through fields rather than works, and once inside the old town the Gastkirche, the Icon Museum Recklinghausen and the Städtische Kunsthalle Recklinghausen are all within a walk of one another.