Wuppertal

Wuppertal (German pronunciation: [ˈvʊpɐtaːl] ^ⓘ; lit. "Wupper Dale") is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. With a population of approximately 355,000, Wuppertal is the seventh-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia as well as the 17th-largest city in Germany. It was founded in 1929 by the merger of the cities and towns of Elberfeld, Barmen, Ronsdorf, Cronenberg and Vohwinkel, and was initially "Barmen-Elberfeld" before adopting its present name in 1930. It is regarded as the capital and largest city of the Bergisches Land (historically this was Düsseldorf).

The city straddles the densely populated banks of the River Wupper, a tributary of the Rhine. Wuppertal is located between the Ruhr (Essen) to the north, Düsseldorf to the west, and Cologne to the southwest, and over time has grown together with Solingen, Remscheid and Hagen. The stretching of the city in a long band along the narrow Wupper Valley leads to a spatial impression of Wuppertal being larger than it actually is. The city is known for its steep slopes, its woods and parks, and for being the greenest city in Germany, with two-thirds green space of the total municipal area. From any part of the city, it is only a ten-minute walk to one of the public parks or woodland paths.

The Wupper Valley was, along with the Ore Mountains and before the Ruhr, the first highly industrialized region of Germany, which resulted in the construction of the Wuppertal Schwebebahn suspension railway in the then independent cities of Elberfeld and Barmen. The increasing demand for coal from the textile mills and blacksmith shops from those cities encouraged the expansion of the nearby Ruhr. Wuppertal still is a major industrial centre, being home to industries such as textiles, metallurgy, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, electronics, automobiles, rubber, vehicles and printing equipment. Aspirin originates from Wuppertal, patented in 1897 by Bayer, as does the Vorwerk Kobold vacuum cleaner. The Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy and the European Institute for International Economic Relations are located in the city. Barmen was the birthplace of Friedrich Engels.