Lake Phoenix is Dortmund's most visible act of reinvention: a former steelworks site in Hörde turned into a broad artificial lake with promenades, apartments, bridges, and cafe terraces. It is not old Dortmund, but it says a lot about what the Ruhr has become after heavy industry moved out.
Walk the loop around the water and you still catch traces of the industrial past in the scale of the land and the nearby Phoenix West structures. On a warm evening it is one of the city's easiest places to linger, especially if you want a Dortmund sight that is about present-day urban life rather than churches and museums.