Germany · Nordrhein-Westfalen · Solingen
Ohligs, Solingen — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Ohligs is the westernmost Stadtteil of Solingen, a Hofschaft grown into a town after the 1867 railway station, taking its present name on 11 August 1891.
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Where to stay in Ohligs
Where visitors usually base themselves, and why.
The station is the whole point. What is now the Solinger Hauptbahnhof stands here rather than in Solingen proper, about nine kilometres from the city centre, which makes Ohligs the practical base for anyone arriving by train and the awkward one for anyone wanting the old town. Hilden begins across the road. The two have grown together so far that the boundary shows only in the naming of the Landesstraße 85, which is the Walder Straße on the Hilden side and the Hildener Straße here. Düsseldorf and Cologne are both close.
About Ohligs
What are the main landmarks in Ohligs?
The heath holds the low point. Solingen's lowest ground, fifty-three metres above sea level, lies in the Ohligser Heide recreation area, and the highest point of the Stadtteil is up on the Hackhauser Straße where the St. Joseph parish church stands. The rest is a plateau.
Ohligs belongs to the Mittelbergische Hochflächen and sits at about a hundred metres, its Devonian slate, greywacke and sandstone falling away westward toward the Bergische Heideterrasse. The railway is still the landmark. The Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahngesellschaft built the station in 1867 on its line between Haan and Deutz, and what it set off turned a scattered Hofschaft into a small town inside a generation.
What is the history of Ohligs?
A railway line made a town. The Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahngesellschaft wanted a route between Haan and Deutz in the 1860s and built a station in 1867, and the population growth that followed turned the Hofschaft into a flourishing small town in the Landkreis Solingen. The name followed the money.
Councillors of the Bürgermeisterei Merscheid decided to rename Merscheid after its most prosperous part, and the change took effect on 11 August 1891. Independence lasted another generation. On 1 August 1929 a political decision merged Ohligs with Gräfrath, Höhscheid, Wald and Solingen into the new Großstadt Solingen, against the will of the Ohligs citizenry, and what came out of it was the Stadtbezirk Ohligs, Aufderhöhe and Merscheid.
Where is Ohligs?
Ohligs sits about nine kilometres west of the Solingen centre and roughly twenty southeast of Düsseldorf, bordered by Haan to the north, Langenfeld to the southwest, Hilden to the northwest and the Solingen Stadtteile Wald, Merscheid, Höhscheid and Aufderhöhe to the east and south.
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Updated September 2026