Düsseldorf

Places researched in this city

A selection of the 54 places we've researched in this city. The full set is in the Parroo app.

• Gothic basilica
• Baroque churches
• Riverside promenade
• Deconstructivist architecture
• Royal palaces
• Art museums
• Brewpub culture

• St. Lambertus Basilica

  The twisted spire you see above the Altstadt skyline was not a medieval quirk but the result of botched 1815 repair work after a fire, and it has defined Düsseldorf's silhouette ever since. The Gothic basilica beneath it dates to 1288, the same year the city won its charter after the Battle of Worringen.

• Benrath Palace

  Commissioned as a summer retreat and future widow's residence, this 1771 palace by French architect Nicolas de Pigage sits at the precise transition point between Rococo extravagance and early Neoclassicism, and its 612,000-square-metre park still wraps around it almost untouched. Three museums now occupy the wings that once housed an electoral court.

• Gehry Buildings (Neuer Zollhof)

  An architectural competition for this former customs site was first won by Zaha Hadid, whose design was never built; Frank Gehry got the commission instead and completed his trio of warping towers in white plaster, red brick, and stainless steel in 1999. They anchored the transformation of a derelict harbour into the MedienHafen creative district.

• Königsallee (Kö)

  The boulevard was originally called Kastanienallee, but in 1848 King Friedrich Wilhelm IV was pelted with horse manure while passing through, and the street was renamed in his honour three years later as a gesture of atonement. The 31-metre-wide canal that runs down its centre was fed by the Düssel River and is lined with 120 chestnut trees.

• Düsseldorf Art Academy

  Founded in 1773, this 158-metre Neo-Renaissance building on the Rhine has shaped modern art history far beyond Germany, incubating the Düsseldorf School of Painting in the 19th century and then Fluxus and the ZERO movement in the 20th. Its annual open-studio show, the Rundgang, draws crowds who come to spot the next generation before gallery prices kick in.

• Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth

  In 1062, the young King Henry IV was kidnapped from this very palace in what became known as the Kaiserswerth Coup, a power grab that destabilised the Holy Roman Empire for years. The ruins visible today, with walls up to six metres thick, date mostly from Frederick Barbarossa's 12th-century expansion of the site into a toll fortress on the Rhine.

• Neander Church

  Built as a hidden courtyard church between 1683 and 1687 because Counter-Reformation rules forbade Protestants from constructing street-facing places of worship, the Neanderkirche only became visible to passers-by after surrounding buildings were destroyed in World War II. It is named after Joachim Neander, the Reformed minister who preached nearby in a valley later famous for the discovery of Neanderthal fossils in 1856.