Coal mining and ballet in the industrial heart of Germany

From the top of the Ruhr Museum, you can still see some smokestack industry nearby.

Cindy and I went to the Ruhr Museum in Essen yesterday, which is housed in a huge former coal-processing and mining complex.

The Ruhr region (Ruhrgebiet) includes a vast area in the Rhine and Ruhr river valleys that has been the industrial heart of Germany.

The Allies bombed the heck out of the Ruhr in World War II, and three-fourths of Gelsenkirchen, where Bridget's dance company has its home, was destroyed. The town of Essen next door housed the huge Krupp armaments and steel factories and was also heavily bombed.

Still, after the war, this area was rebuilt and continued to be a major industrial center focused on production of coal, coke and steel. The MusikTheater (photos here) where our daughter Bridget's ballet company performs, was completed in 1959 and was viewed as a symbol of the area's reconstruction.