Oberhausen

Encyclopedia : O : OB : OBE : Oberhausen

For other places with the same name, see Oberhausen (disambiguation).

Oberhausen is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the Ruhr area, 35 km to the north of Düsseldorf. Population: 220,033 (31.12.2003).

The city is a result of economic growth in the 19th century. It was but a rural area until about 1860, when coal mines were opened and the production of steel began to turn large areas of today's city into a huge industrial complex. Several villages merged in 1862 to make up a new town. In 1929 the nearby towns of Sterkrade and Osterfeld were incorporated.

Oberhausen is a typical city of the Ruhr area, which had been growing around industries.

Today the city is trying to get a new standing. In the 1990s a huge shopping mall was built on an abandoned steel works site.

There is an art gallery and an international award festival for short films in Oberhausen.

Schloss Oberhausen

Twinning

• - Middlesbrough (United Kingdom), since 1974
• - Zaporizhzhia (Ukraine), since 1986
• - Freital (Saxony/Germany), since 1990
• - Iglesias (Sardinia/Italy), since 2002
• - Carbonia (Sardinia/Italy), since 2002
• - Mersin (Turkey)

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.