Ferropolis - City of Iron

Excavator in the evening sun - view over the arena (Udo Rheinländer)

"FERROPOLIS, the "City of Iron", is the attractive excursion and event location for fans and families. Industrial history and contemporary music culture enter into a unique blend in the FERROPOLIS Arena.

Five gigantic lignite excavators, totalling 7,000 tonnes of steel, escaped scrapping. They are a reminder of an industrial epoch in decline. For fifty years, their huge shovels dug deep into the earth and extracted some 70 million tonnes of lignite. The open-cast mine became Gremminer See near Gräfenhainichen, Paul Gerhardt's birthplace. Here, in the triangle between the Bauhaus town of Dessau, Wörlitzer Park and Luther's town of Wittenberg, lies FERROPOLIS - the city of iron - on a peninsula.

The flooding of the Golpa-Nord open-cast lignite mine in 2000 created an idyllic recreational area. The City of Iron is one of the impressive examples of the structural change that took place in the region between Bitterfeld-Wolfen and Wittenberg - from an ecologically severely damaged region to a unique recreational and cultural landscape.

Many famous artists have performed in the unusual setting of FERROPOLIS, including Metallica, Die Ärzte, Die Toten Hosen, Björk, Kylie Minogue, Helene Fischer, Peter Maffay, Udo Lindenberg, Herbert Grönemeyer, André Rieu and Helmut Lotti.

Every year, the big festivals melt! and splash and, since 2017, the metal festival "With Full Force" take place at FERROPOLIS. The arena is also ideally suited for classical music performances. 

FERROPOLIS offers guided tours of the peninsula throughout the year. In addition to information on the history and future of the City of Iron, there are explanations on how the large-scale opencast mining equipment works and on mining history. A special attraction is a tour of large-scale opencast mining equipment, where you can experience the fascinating technology up close and enjoy the landscape panorama at the same time. 

In the former electrical station, a small exhibition shows exhibits on regional mining history. A special highlight of the exhibition is the skeleton of a forest elephant. It lived about 120,000 years ago and was found in the neighbouring Gröbern open-cast mine. 

On the walls of the former factory halls, the street artist ecb created larger-than-life portraits of miners who are representative of all those who mined coal in the Golpa-Nord opencast mine.

Ferropolis is a stop on the European Route of Industrial Heritage ERIH.

For younger visitors there is a playground with swings, slide, climbing frame and mechanical diggers.

The Osteria in the FERROPOLIS Orangery invites you to linger, eat and drink from April to October.