City Overview: Hagen

Hagen is a small town on the Ruhr, right at the border between Westphalia and the Rhineland. Completely annihilated in WWII, there is for the most part, nothing to see or do here. It is just another West-German industrial city. For those interested in the architecture of modernity, it does however, have Germany’s premier museum to the Art-Nouveau, the Osthaus Museum and its Museum-Villa. It also has fragmentary remnants of its own Art-Nouveau city district.

Justin Bunch | CityscapeTravel

The museum and its attached villa show the development of a style that appealed largely to the new industrial middle-class. Along with the Mathildenhöhe Art Colony in Darmstadt, these museums represent the surviving strands of the German Art-Nouveau. Other than this, you will only find a handful of surviving buildings, mostly in Munich. For those just interested in the style, a trip to Belgium is probably more exciting.


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