The site of the Old Synagogue, on the edge of the city centre near the opera house, is marked by a permanent outdoor memorial that traces the footprint of the 1900 building in the paving and records the fate of Dortmund's Jewish community. The memorial was created in the 1980s after decades of the site standing empty, and has been extended since with additional documentation panels.
The adjacent Ruhr Museum (formerly the Industrie- und Stadtmuseum) includes material on Jewish life in Dortmund before 1933 and the destruction of the community under National Socialism. The memorial site is always accessible; the surrounding square is a quiet stopping point in the middle of what is otherwise a fairly anonymous area of the postwar city.