Oberkassel
Grand façades, the Luegallee and the skyline across the water
Art Nouveau façades, Rhine views and a village feel a bridge away from the centre, with the city's strongest cluster of international and Japanese life.
Read the guide
Medienhafen
An old working harbour reborn in glass and steel
Some neighbourhoods grow slowly; the Medienhafen was reinvented. For a century this was Düsseldorf's working harbour — the Handelshafen, all cranes, warehouses and rail sidings on the Rhine just south of the Altstadt. When the freight moved on, the city began converting the old Zollhafen basin in 1990, plot by plot and with no master plan — and by the end of the decade it had become the most photographed corner of the city. Today the Medienhafen is where Düsseldorf keeps its media, advertising and architecture firms by day and fills its rooftop bars by night: a glass-and-steel showcase wrapped around the old harbour water, with the original cranes and quay walls left in place as a reminder of what it used to be.
For a newcomer, it's worth being clear about what the Medienhafen is and isn't. It's central, modern, international and full of life — but it's a quarter you largely live beside rather than deep inside. The housing is limited and high-end, and the real residential heart is the streets just inland. More on that below.
You live beside the Medienhafen more than inside it — the real homes are just inland.
That working identity matters if a job is what's bringing you to Düsseldorf. The harbour is the city's media-and-creative engine — broadcasters, advertising and PR agencies, fashion and design studios — with the smart, international tempo that comes with it. Land a role in one of those firms and your commute could be a short walk along the water, which is no small part of the appeal.
Land a media job here and your commute could be a walk along the water.
An open-air gallery of architecture
Gehry's leaning towers and a harbour full of statement buildings
The Medienhafen is, in effect, an open-air gallery of contemporary architecture, and its signature is the Neuer Zollhof — Frank Gehry's trio of leaning, curving towers, finished in 1998–99. One is clad in white plaster, one in red brick, and the mirrored centre building reflects both. Düsseldorfers call them Gehrys Tänzer, Gehry's dancers, and they are the single most photographed thing in the city.
But the towers are only the headline. Because the harbour was developed building by building rather than to one plan, the variety is the point: the colour-panelled Colorium by William Alsop with its jutting red roof, minimalist concrete by David Chipperfield, the glass Stadttor (City Gate) at the edge, a wooden pedestrian-and-cycle bridge with a restaurant slung in its middle, and — threaded between them — the listed cranes and quay walls of the original port. Old and new in the same frame.
Old harbour cranes and leaning glass towers, in the same frame.
Eating, drinking and after-work
Waterside restaurants, rooftop bars and the after-work crowd
After dark, the offices empty and the harbour fills. The Medienhafen is one of the city's prime addresses for eating and drinking: waterside restaurants along the Speditionstraße and Kaistraße, cocktail terraces, rooftop bars with the towers lit up below, and clubs that run late at the weekend. It leans upscale and design-conscious — this is where Düsseldorf does after-work drinks and special-occasion dinners rather than a cheap Altbier in a wood-panelled Brauhaus.
Be warned, though, that it's a destination as much as a neighbourhood. On a warm Friday the harbour pulls in the whole city, so the quiet you get on a Tuesday evening is not the quiet you get on a Saturday night — worth weighing if you're tempted by a flat with a balcony over the water.
A neighbourhood on a Tuesday; the whole city's terrace on a Saturday.
The Rheinturm and the riverfront
The Rhine Tower, the parliament and the walk to the old town
Standing over it all is the Rheinturm, the 240-metre Rhine Tower of 1982 and the city's tallest structure. There's an observation deck and, above it, the revolving Top 180 restaurant; the shaft itself carries the Lichtzeitpegel, a column of lights that tells the time and is often billed as one of the largest digital clocks in the world. At its foot sits the circular Landtag, the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The tower also marks the start of the riverfront proper. From its foot the Rheinuferpromenade runs north along the water straight into the Altstadt — a ten-minute riverside walk, past the parliament and the lawns, that is one of the real pleasures of living down here.
A ten-minute riverside walk takes you from the Rhine Tower to the longest bar in the world.
Living here: the flats
Design lofts and harbour views, for those who want new and central
Living in the Medienhafen proper is a particular taste. There isn't much housing, and what exists is high-end: design lofts, penthouses and new-build apartments with floor-to-ceiling glass and harbour or Rhine views, often in buildings that share an address with offices and hotels. It suits professionals, couples and relocating singles who want modern, central and waterside, and who'll happily trade green space and family infrastructure for architecture and a balcony over the water. Families and anyone after a quieter, leafier street tend to look just inland — which is where most people who say they "live at the Medienhafen" actually live. HeyFlats lists furnished apartments both in the harbour buildings and in the streets immediately around them.
Just inland: Unterbilk and the Lorettoviertel
The residential heart next door — Lorettostraße, cafés and old façades
Step a few hundred metres back from the water and you reach Unterbilk and its Lorettoviertel, the residential quarter the Medienhafen leans on. Once sleepy, it is now one of Düsseldorf's most sought-after addresses: handsome turn-of-the-century façades, the boutique-and-café spine of Lorettostraße, the tree-lined Fürstenwall and Bilker Allee, the greenery of the Florapark and the K21 modern-art museum in the old Ständehaus.
This is also where the furnished-flat market really lives. It draws a mix of young professionals, creatives and families into classic Altbau with high ceilings and parquet, alongside new residential ensembles rising on the seam between the harbour and the Loretto streets. You get the Medienhafen's restaurants and the Rhine on your doorstep, with an actual neighbourhood to come home to.
Most people who say they live at the Medienhafen really live in the Loretto streets just behind it.
Getting around
The Medienhafen sits right at the edge of the city centre. Trams and the U-Bahn — the Kirchplatz and Landtag/Stromstraße stops, with Bilk's stations close by — put the Altstadt, the Hauptbahnhof and the Königsallee within minutes, and the whole quarter is walkable and cycle-friendly, with the Rhine and the old town a short stroll along the promenade. For a central address it's exceptionally well connected; you rarely need a car, though a parking space in the newer buildings comes at a premium.
More neighbourhoods