Phoenix-See lake, Dortmund Live Cam

The Phoenix See is an artificial lake in the south of Dortmund, in the Ruhr, with a castle on the slope above it. The webcam looks across the water at the new blocks.

A steelworks stood on this ground for a hundred and fifty years. When it closed in 2001 the plant was sold whole to a Chinese company, dismantled by a thousand workers and shipped to Jiangsu, where it was rebuilt and restarted.

The cleared site was dug out, decontaminated and flooded in 2010 to make the lake, with housing and offices round the shore. The Ruhr has done a good deal of this: the region has been converting works, pits and slag heaps into parks and water for forty years.