warehouses and goods offices. The buildings now house the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. As soon as you start your tour of the museum you are assailed by the noise of old spinning and weaving [...] communications and emphasise its role in the motor-car and aeronautics industry. All in all this is one of the largest science and industry museums in the world. [...] Manchester was one of the very first industrial cities in the world. It is a byword for unrestrained capitalism and appalling social poverty; but also for its pioneering achievements. One of these was

The last working jute mill in Britain is now an exciting museum. Here visitors can find out more about the past history of the local textile industry at first hand. In the offices they can eavesdrop on the [...] smell of oil and the noise of running machines, Verdant Works is a place where the power of the industrial past is made vividly present.

find the answers to all these questions on the historic brickworks site of the Westphalian Industrial Museum in Lage. The brickworks are situated in the heart of the Lippe region that was once renowned [...] days several times a year. In addition the museum offers regular small-gauge railway trips around the site of the former clay pit. And every year at the Museum Festivities the huge ring furnace is set alight [...] easy. You can see this for yourself inside the old workers’ cottages at the Lage brickworks. Here museum visitors can find out how more about the families’ everyday struggles to survive whilst their menfolk

lectures. And from here you are free to visit the seven other fascinating museum sites administered by the LWL Museums of Industrial Culture. [...] families is the primary theme of the exhibition at this, the central site of the Westphalian Industrial Museum. The one thing you cannot do here is travel underground. The pit has been filled in on safety [...] darkness and audiovisual projections that convey authentic impressions of the miners' working world. The museum's experience programme is rounded off by a programme of events including festivities, film evenings

The museum, a site of the Museum Network of the Cultural Foundation of the Piraeus Bank Group (PIOP), is close to a celebrated beauty spot called Kefalari-tou Al-Yanni. All the restored industrial buildings

families? The "Portal of Industrial Heritage" translates this history to the entire Ruhr district: multimedia stations effectively showcase 18 former flagships of large-scale industry - all under one roof [...] roof. The Ruhr Museum in the former coal washing plant focuses on even more immense dimensions. It recounts the natural and cultural history of the Ruhr area over a period of 300 million years - from the emergence

the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea (Wales) prides itself on state-of-the-art computer technology. This is all about Wales and how to recount its unique and complex industrial history in as exciting [...] your life put at risk as a collier, and shortly afterwards bask in the fairy-tale wealth of an industrial tycoon. In this way you are able to endure noise and filth, experience repression and working-class [...] multi-facetted and astonishingly sharp picture of what life was once like in Wales and how the motor of industrial revolution has made Wales what it is today.

now brought the everyday life of the mine back to life. The former office buildings now serve as a museum for mining artefacts and tin products – not to speak of the precious minerals which where the brilliant [...] their original equipment bear impressive witness to the technological development of the tin mining industry. The “Dry”, where the miners changed and showered looks as if the next shift is likely to show up

and exciting museums in Germany. Visitors walk through the various sections of the museum as if they are travelling in a time machine. Everything is so deceptively real: the early industrial spinning machine [...] specialist professional groups. In 1996 DASA was awarded the title of the “best new industrial and technical museum in Europe”. [...] message is clear. People at work are liable to injury and can only take a certain amount of strain. The museum vividly reveals the risks of the workplace and also shows how to avoid them. No expense has been

enormous exhibition area of around 12,000 square metres, makes the German Mining Museum in Bochum the largest and most important museum of its kind in the world. [...] The equipment ranges from a mallet and gad to a fully-automatic disc shearer. But the German Mining Museum in Bochum is not content with machines, no matter how spectacular they might be. For the history [...] conditions, life between colliery and carrier pigeons, strikes and settlements, the decline of the coal industry and structural transformation. All these themes are reflected in a huge number of everyday objects

you can find the Küppersmühle museum, renowned for its top-class collection of contemporary art. A part of the exhibition on Duisburg history in the nearby Duisburg City Museum informs visitors about the [...] the creation of the milling industry in the inner harbour. Children can have a great time in the Legoland Discovery Centre. The “Garden of Memory”, an artistic response to the Nazi terror flanked by the vital [...] harbour its reputation as the “breadbasket of the Ruhrgebiet”. Today it is a jewel of contemporary industrial heritage.

restored. Since 1989 it has functioned as an outside branch of the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum in Hagen. The “Museum of the Hagen Impulse”, as it is now called, contains a huge number of legacies of local [...] the man who commissioned the work was a young banker’s son, patron and founder of the world’s first museum of contemporary art, Karl Ernst Osthaus. Both these men were responsible for making the Hohenhof [...] he considered the united power of art to be the basic instrument with which to transform modern industrial society. He thought that in so far as art arouses an awareness of beauty and reveals interconnections

Hattingen, one of eight sites of the LWL Museums of Industrial Culture, is centred around. Visitors are invited to discover the varied aspects of the industrial monument by following several theme routes [...] further steps of steel production. The green path traces the very specific flora and fauna of the industrial wasteland, and the path of the rat offers exciting experiences for children. But there is even

was closed in 1982 it mainly supplied water to the neighbouring industrial plants. In 1992 the RWW opened the Aquarius Industrial Museum in the redesigned tower and since then it has received several awards [...] polluted. That is easy to forget. But not if you pay a visit to the Aquarius Water Museum in Mülheim an der Ruhr. The museum is housed in a listed redbrick water tower in the suburb of Styrum. Two lifts take

jukebox in the local bar are so real you might even think you’re a part of the scene. The Electricity Museum, housed in an handsome old transformer station in Recklinghausen, takes visitors back on a journey [...] could deliver just enough electricity to service a few houses and street lamps. It was above all industry which recognised the potential inherent in electricity and began to exploit it at an early stage [...] at a much later stage. The first fully automatic washing machine was only introduced in 1951. The museum shows the developments and improvements by means of a tour of lifelike everyday scenes and encourages

the Rhineland Industrial Museum. The Museum of Heavy Industry opened its doors in 1997. Oberhausen, a traditional iron and steel town, is the ideal site for such a museum. Currently the museum is closed for [...] what a grinding job it was to operate the powerful hammer. Indeed the museum, one of the six sites of the Rhineland Industrial Museum, has a huge collection of discarded steel-making machines in its collection: [...] Heavy industry is heavy labour – for man and machines. A very clear example is the ten metre high steam forging hammer dating back to 1900, which stands in a museum on the site of the Altenberg zinc factory

lift, today part of the Landschaftsverband (regional authority) of Westphalia-Lippe (LWL) Museums of Industrial Culture, was regarded as a technological masterpiece. The old engine house offers a short

Witten was one of the first deep-pit mines on the Ruhr – a good enough reason for the LWL Museums of Industrial Culture to erect one of its eight sites here. Visitors can walk along a 100 metre gallery [...] brickworks which operated until 1963. The museum was opened in 2003 and tells the story of the birth of mining in the Ruhr valley at the start of the industrial revolution. [...] coal on the river you can go aboard a 35 metre life-size replica of an original sailing barge. The museum has yet another replica construction: a small pit from which coal was hauled in buckets which shows

high temperatures and loads with the help of wire. It is no surprise that this museum is located in Altena. The industrial history of the town is brimming over with wire-drawers. Not to speak of hooks and [...] neighbouring town of Iserlohn have remained important centres of the wire industry to the present day. The German Wire Museum exists since 1965. It was originally housed in a part of the mediaeval Altena [...] wire or wire netting you’re in for a huge and very pleasant surprise when you visit the German Wire Museum in Altena in the Sauerland region, south of the Ruhr. Here you can see everything which has been

complete blast furnace site in Germany. This was what an industrial plant looked like before the Ruhrgebiet stepped in to create an industrial landscape par excellence. The blast furnace is 10 metres high [...] Smoking chimneys and industrial spires towering into the heavens! Not here! The Luisenhütte in Balve-Wocklum looks almost cosy. No steel, no complicated tangles of pipes, no gigantic engine house. Instead [...] the furnace pond had its use. It drove the furnace blowing engine via a waterwheel. Visitors to the museum can see for themselves - live - how this worked. An ancient steam engine is also still in operation