While I was writing a previous post on the origins of steampunk, inspired by a trip to Wuppertal, it occurred to me that I’ve actually been to several other very “steampunk” locations in Germany since moving here. As a country that boomed during the industrial era, it has a lot of these to offer, but they’re sometimes off the beaten track and not the first attractions listed among the ‘must-sees’ of a region (often displaced by castles or quaint villages, which I can completely understand!).

As a writer of science fiction and fantasy, however, these places filled me with a particular kind of thrill and wonder, as if I’d been transported into another century or stepped into the pages of a novel. Steam-era architecture, giant cogs, brass finishes, steel rivets, historic machines, old fonts… it all felt like fertile inspiration just waiting to be transformed into a steampunk tale or artwork.

It occurred to me that maybe other lovers of the genre, or just generally of historical places, might feel the same way. So in case anyone else finds themselves in Germany and looking for a similar experience, I thought I’d share a list of the most impressive steampunk-ish destinations I’ve visited, and highlight some fascinating things I learned about both the lighter and darker sides of their history:

1. The Völklingen Ironworks

The Völklinger Hütte is a colossal ironworks in the south-western German state of the Saarland, close to the French border. Now a museum, it’s a weird fluke of history that it still exists at all. It started in the 1880s, but when the economics no longer made sense a century later, it wasn’t torn down and scrapped like many others at the time. The cost of demolition was too high. Instead its historical significance was recognised, and it eventually became a UNESCO world heritage listed site in 1994.

It is the world’s only fully intact ironworks from the industrial era, and it’s HUGE. You can literally spend the day here, exploring exhibits and dark passageways, climbing steel towers, traversing giant machine halls, admiring extremely steampunk gadgetry, stepping over abandoned train tracks. It is a truly fascinating place, and in some parts you really feel you’ve stepped into another world.

On a sadder note, my visit also taught me what happens to a town when its primary source of employment disappears. Venturing through the streets outside the ironworks, I couldn’t help but notice the cheaply built shopping mall and the once grand but now dilapidated turn-of-the-century buildings. The local taxi driver who drove us to the museum – a woman whose husband used to work at the ironworks – referred to it with some bitterness as “the scrap heap” (der Schrotthaufen). For her, it represented memories of better times. Yet even that boom and bust is part of the history explored in the museum, just as are the dark chapters during both world wars when forced labour was used here.

2. The Old Elbe Tunnel in Hamburg

You might think a tunnel would be a boring thing to visit – not so with the Alter Elbtunnel under the Elbe river in Hamburg, which was a technical marvel when it opened in 1911. Your journey begins at street level in a domed building, where you have two choices: board a giant, extremely steampunk elevator (which still has an attendant to run it for you!), or descend a spiral staircase down the silo-like structure to the bottom. There, begin your stroll past tiled walls and period light fixtures from another era, then enjoy the same elevator-or-stairway experience up on the other side.

The tunnel was, amusingly, originally intended to be used by cars (which shows you how much bigger cars have gotten since then). Now it’s reserved for pedestrians and cyclists. One of the things I love about it is the same thing I loved about the suspension railway in Wuppertal – namely that it remains a totally normal means for locals to get around the city. Sure, there were tourists like us in there, but there were also bored commuters on bikes waiting for the elevator, still just using it for what people used it for back in 1911: getting from one side of the river to the other.

On a side note, it’s not exactly ‘steampunk’, but the Miniatur Wunderland nearby is also well worth a visit, especially on a guided tour. Book well in advance though – it’s Germany’s most popular museum!

3. The Planetarium in Hamburg

Another one in Hamburg! Honestly, Hamburg is just generally great for steampunk vibes – the whole Speicherstadt harbour area is brimming with historic industrial buildings, canals and bridges. The Planetarium, however, deserves specific mention.

This is not your typical tourist destination, since it’s farther from the city centre, but it’s one of the oldest planetariums in the world. It was initially a water tower, but an early Zeiss projector (which itself looks like something out of Dr Who) was showing audiences the heavens here as early as 1930, and it has been a planetarium ever since. It is still offering modern, high tech space shows, so you can admire the Art Deco architecture and photos of galaxies and nebulae in the waiting area, then head in, relax into a reclining seat under a dome-shaped screen, and take a trip through the universe.

To experience the history fully, take the lift up to the viewing platform, enjoy the view, and then walk down the stairs (or just take the stairs in both directions), because there’s a little wall of historic info and posters in the stairwell on the upper level, and the stairs themselves are historic.

4. The Suspension Railway in Wuppertal

I mentioned this in my last post already, but it definitely belongs on this list. Finished in 1901, the Wuppertal Schwebebahn is the oldest suspension railway in the world. The carriages hang from steel tracks built over the Wupper river and wind through a cityscape that retains old brick buildings and bridges. Several stops have been rebuilt in the original style, such as the one you exit through to get to the Schwebodrom, a museum with an artistic light show and a VR experience that is well worth a visit.

As for a tidbit I forgot to mention in my last post, one of the most famous episodes in the history of the Schwebebahn is that of Tuffi the elephant. In a publicity stunt, a circus owner decided to promote his circus’s arrival in town by taking a young elephant onto the suspended railway. A short way into the journey, Tuffi panicked, crashed out of the carriage, and plunged into the Wupper river. Miraculously, she survived unharmed, and lived until the 1980s. The story has become local legend, and there’s an elephant statue in the river to mark the spot she fell. I couldn’t help but notice that even this felt like something from a novel or film, replete with a circus showman attempting a dangerous stunt.

5. The Zeppelin Museums in Friedrichshafen and Meersburg

Lake Constance is the home of Graf (Count) Zeppelin, the inventor of the airships that inspired many a steampunk story. To be honest, I knew little about zeppelins, so I approached my first museum visit with the mild curiosity of a tourist trying to fill an afternoon. I left, however, so fascinated that I went to another museum a few months later… yes, there are two zeppelin museums.

The small one-room Zeppelin Museum in Meersburg houses a private collection and is staffed by a local volunteer – an older lady with boundless knowledge about zeppelins. It was packed to the rafters with original items, from on-board menus and telephones to advertising material and branded tea sets, as well as old photos and diagrams, all of which had an incredibly steampunk aesthetic.

The other Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen is much larger and more modern, with an original to-scale replica of parts of the Hindenburg that you can walk through (awesome!), interactive displays, extensive exhibits (that are also available in English, I’m not sure how I’d have fared in the smaller museum without speaking German) and a collection of original remnants and paraphernalia.

Both are great, though I went to the smaller one first, and I must admit, it had an old-school “cabinet of curiosities” vibe and novelty factor that charmed me a tad more.

Today we tend to think of zeppelins as doomed inventions that went up in flames, but they were in use for almost a 40 year period and rivalled sea ships for inter-continental voyages. I was fascinated to learn how massive the Hindenburg was (it makes an A380 look small), what a zeppelin looked like inside (the outer shell is not directly filled with gas, as I had assumed, but with gas balloons and a metal frame), how expensive flying on them was (passengers were mostly rich men – a ticket cost 6-12 months of crew member’s salary) and that they were briefly used in WWI by both Britain and Germany.

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Would any of these destinations make it on to your own travel wish list? Or have you already been to one? Are there other “steampunky” attractions I haven’t listed that are also worth a visit, in Germany or elsewhere? Let me know in the comments!