The Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Handwerk und Technik (LWL Open-Air Museum) occupies the wooded Mäckingerbach valley on Hagen's eastern edge and is one of the largest open-air museums in Germany, focused specifically on crafts and small industry rather than rural housing. Over sixty workshops have been moved here from across Westphalia and rebuilt — a paper mill, a printing works, a hammer mill, a brewery, a glassblower's, coopers, rope makers, smiths.
What sets the museum apart is that almost all the workshops actually operate. You can watch paper being made, glass being blown, beer being brewed, and the great water-driven hammers swinging. The valley setting, with the stream running through it, makes a visit feel like a long walk through a working historical landscape rather than a museum corridor. A full visit takes most of a day. Open April to October.