From Open-Pit Mine to a Lakeland – A Bus Tour Through the Rhenish Mining Area and Its Visions for the Future

As part of Hidden Futures

Dates:

Fri 08.05.26

13:00

Tickets

When purchasing tickets, you have the option of choosing between four different price categories based on your own assessment:

- Minimum price
- Reduced price
- Regular price
- Supporter price

Prices within these categories vary depending on the services included in the ticket.

Furthermore, we offer a number of free tickets so that everyone can participate, regardless of their income. Simply contact us or send us an email to service@pact-zollverein.de.

Meeting point Bus tour

Meeting point is at 12:40 p.m. at PACT Zollverein. The bus tour starts at 1 p.m.

Duration

The trip lasts about 6 hours in total.

Erdoberfläche mit groben Steinen und trockenen Pflanzen im Vordergrund. Im Hintergrund sind parallel verlaufende, wellenförmige Spuren im sandigen Boden sichtbar.

The tour into the Rhenish Mining area takes us through a torn-up landscape between lignite mining future promises. Where the massive pit of the Hambach surface mine still stands today, a new lakeland is set to emerge in the coming decades – one rich in ecological, economic, and tourist potential.

The tour looks at this promised future – and at the reality on the ground. In Elsdorf, Manheim, and Bürgewald, we meet people, including artist Silke Schatz and landscape and open space planner Daniela Karow-Kluge, who are planning, accompanying, or questioning this structural transformation. In this way, the region becomes tangible as a contested space – and the question becomes urgent: what is to become of this landscape, and who decides?