Duisburg inner harbour
With its eventful history, Duisburg's inner harbor stands for a successful structural change. Today, the lively city district on the water combines (industrial) culture, work and living.
Located north of the old town, the inner harbor initially served as a transshipment point for coal, then as a trading center for construction and mine timber and finally as the “bread basket of the district”, with the largest milling industry in Germany. Merchants and citizens of Duisburg invested in their own future when they initially contributed financially to the Rhine Canal - which later became the Outer Port. The canal, inaugurated in 1832, was intended to secure their connection to the Rhine again, after it had silted up after 1200 and its river bed had shifted further west in favor of the city of Ruhrort. Twelve years later, the Ruhr Canal was opened and with it the port, which initially served as a hub for coal. After the introduction of the railway, however, another product proved to be significantly more lucrative: wood was in demand both in the burgeoning rail transport and in the coal and steel industry. It was mainly delivered from the Spessart and the Black Forest. Between 1889 and 1893, a separate timber port with its own steam sawmills and planing mills was built; the Ruhr Canal was expanded into an inner harbor.
New sawing and transport methods as well as increasing population figures heralded a new change: the port had served its purpose as a hub for the timber trade. Instead, the grain industry expanded to compensate for food shortages in the industrial regions of the Ruhr area. From then on, mills and silos took in grain from southern Russia, the Danube countries, North America and India. At the turn of the century, Germany's largest milling industry flourished in the "bread basket of the district", which lasted until the 1960s. Then the economic power of the port dwindled again. New concepts were needed. The goal: a service park.
Initial attempts to redesign the inner harbor by a separate development company in the mid-1990s were continued by the IBA Emscher Park. Sir Norman Foster developed the plans for a multifunctional service park. Today, the storage facilities house their own marina, a varied gastronomic scene as well as renowned museums and the state archive of North Rhine-Westphalia. Among other things, guided tours on the history and architecture of the inner harbor are offered to visitors. Round trips from the Steiger Schwanentor also lead directly to the Port of Duisburg, the largest inland port in the world. Regular events such as the Inner Harbor Festival with the world's largest dragon boat fun regatta, the Marina Market, the ExtraShift or the Children's Culture Festival also liven up the newly created city district.
