Wuppertal; Saturday, 23 September, 2023

After a decent night sleep and a good breakfast I headed out of the hotel to head over to the city’s gallery and museum the Von de Heydt Museum. Originally the Elberfeld state gallery the museum was the first in the world to purchase a painting by Pablo Picasso and along with works from Max Beckmann they built up quite a collection, right up to the point that the Nazi’s labelled both artists as degenerate and confiscated their works. After the war the museum was able to recover their artefacts and at the time of visiting had an extensive exhibition on the twos work, including a number of loans from other institutions.

From the museum I wandered through the centre of town down towards the Laurentisplatz, home to the city’s catholic basilica, but due to a wedding taking place the church was closed, so instead I had a quick lunch break in a café on the square, just keeping an eye on the weather as the forecast had originally predicted showers for around this time, which in the end never turned up and in fact after the cloud started to thin out in the afternoon the weather proceeded to get really warm and sunny for the rest of the weekend.

From the Laurentisplatz I had a bit more of a wander down to the New Church a short distance away, at which point I’d reached the end of the pedestrianised centre of Wuppertal so I headed over to the nearby bus stop and caught the bus the length of the city to Oberbarmen to visit the Visiodrom.

The large gas storage tank that had stood over the centre of the Oberbarmen district of since Wuppertal since the 1950s, and was one of the tallest structures in the city, was such an iconic structure that when it was decommissioned in the 1980s rather than tearing down it was protected as a monument, but without any plans of what to do with it. Eventually in the 2010s plans were put together to turn it into a tourist attraction housing the largest cinema screen in Europe and an exhibition space and, because if you’ve got the tallest building in the city, a viewing platform.

The screen shows specially designed films for the Visiodrom, which is then accompanied by an exhibition in the space on the ground floor – at the time of visiting the subject was Leonardo Da Vinic and his inventions and art. There was an interesting exhibition including creations of some of his models and drawings as well as some of his original note books.

The film runs every 30 minutes and by the time I’d looked round the exhibition I’d just missed the next showing so I took the lift all the way up to the top of the tower and the rooftop viewing platform to take in the views over Wuppertal before heading back down to the cinema in time for the next showing.

Having taken in the film and the small museum on the history of the gasometer itself and it’s conversion into the Visiodrom I headed back towards the station to catch the Schwebebahn. The hanging railway runs very frequently – every 3 to 4 minutes during most of the day – and the cars go round a loop at each end which means there is only a drivers cab at one end, at the back there is a large window and set of seat that you can take in the views of this feat of engineering speeding behind you. It means if you join the train at either Oberbarmen or Vohwinkel the two terminus you can pretty much guarantee the best seat on the train for the journey.

It takes about 30 minutes to run the full length of the line, with about 2/3 being above the River Wupper, before it swings in land floating high above the road below for the final leg into Vohwinkel. I took the Schwebebahn all the way out to Vohwinkel and then had a wander around there before catching a later train back into the centre of the Elberfeld area in the hunt for dinner and then back to my hotel room.