Wuppertal

Wuppertal (German pronunciation: [ˈvʊpɐtaːl] ^ⓘ; lit. 'Wupper Dale') is a city in the Düsseldorf region of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, with a population of 355,000. Wuppertal is the seventh-largest city in the state and the 17th-largest in the country. It was founded in 1929 by the merger of Elberfeld, Barmen, Ronsdorf, Cronenberg and Vohwinkel, and was initially called "Barmen-Elberfeld" before adopting its present name in 1930. It is the capital and largest city of the Bergisches Land.

The city straddles the densely populated banks of the River Wupper, a tributary of the Rhine. Wuppertal is located between the Ruhr (Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg and Bochum) 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. Due to the city's length, the Bergish varieties of the Limburgish language called Platt are spoken in its western communities like Vohwinkel, but not in the city's eastern communities like Langenfeld where the Southern varieties of Westphalian language are spoken and the city is called Wupperdaal by locals.