Schurenbachhalde

The direct path, the Direttissima, to the "moon" counts 267 steps. No tree, no bush can be found on the plateau of the Schurenbachhalde in Essen, while the way up is accompanied by post-industrial, lively green. The emptiness nevertheless has concept. In this way, the view from the summit storm concentrates primarily on two things: great art - in the truest sense of the word - and a fantastic panoramic view over the area.

By the end of the 1950s, the tailings produced during coal mining at the Zollverein colliery could be almost completely backfilled underground. With the mechanization of coal mining, however, another solution had to be found for the increasing surplus of tailings: the Schurenbach central heap, which was used by other mines after the Zollverein was closed in 1986. The table mountain today stretches over 48 hectares between the Rhine-Herne Canal and the A42 - and presents itself to visitors as "divided in two": While the ascent leads through a forest park, the slightly elliptical dump plateau resembles a desolate lunar landscape made of dark gray gravel. The view can wander freely in all directions, but almost inevitably gets stuck on the exact center of the summit: on the "slab for the Ruhr area" by the American artist Richard Serra.

Almost 15 meters high, weighing around 70 tons and anchored more than 13 meters deep in the ground: the slab rises lonely and monumentally out of the barren gravel landscape. As a project of the International Building Exhibition (IBA) Emscher Park, the installation of the sculpture in 1998 also marked the end of the fills. A steeply rising landmark as a visible sign of structural change, which could no longer be manufactured in the region itself: in 1998 there was no longer a plant in the Ruhr area that could have rolled a steel slab of this size; the work of art was therefore made in France. As the only fixed point on the summit, it exerts an almost magnetic attraction on visitors today. Another tourist highlight, on the other hand, is associated with significantly more movement: In the summer of 2021, the RVR opened a natural MTB circuit, which leads over the Schurenbachhalde and the neighboring Halde Eickwinkel for around six kilometers. The "Slab Trail" is one of 27 measures from the "Green Gap Closing" action program that is 100 percent funded by the NRW Environment Ministry.