The Nordstadt is Dortmund's most diverse neighbourhood, a densely populated district north of the city centre that has been shaped by successive waves of migration since the late nineteenth century. Polish miners came first during the industrial boom; Turkish and Kurdish workers arrived in the 1960s and 70s; more recently families from the Arab world, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Europe have settled here. The result is a neighbourhood of unusual cultural density.
The Nordmarkt square is the neighbourhood's focal point — a market square lined with grocery stalls, shisha cafes, and halal butchers. Around it fan streets of cheap restaurants, multicultural bakeries, and shops selling ingredients you will not find anywhere else in the Ruhr. It is not a polished neighbourhood and it has real poverty, but it is genuine and unselfconscious in a way that Dortmund's sanitised centre is not. Food here is cheap and usually very good.