Dülmen: Wild Horses, Industrial Heritage and City History
Accommodation in Dülmen
Dülmen offers a variety of ways to shape your stay: listed monuments to its industrial history, a surviving city gate and experiences centered around the wild horses. A digital city tour provides information at various locations. When planning, you can choose between culture, nature and a guided tour rather than treating everything as a single program.
Industrial History and Historic Sites in Dülmen
The two listed spinning mill buildings of the former Bendix textile company stand on Friedrich-Ruin-Straße. They are an important testament to Westphalian industrial heritage. Their connection to the textile company and the surviving buildings give this site a different historical focus from the medieval traces of the city fortifications.
The Lüdinghauser Gate is the only city gate in Dülmen to have survived the dismantling of the city walls and the demolition of the other gates. This structure offers a way to explore a specific part of the city’s history: while the other gates disappeared, this one remained. For anyone interested in historic architecture, it provides a clearly defined point of reference.
The Kreuzkapelle (Chapel of the Cross) is also connected to an older religious route: it marked the end of a wayside cross trail laid out between 1736 and 1738. Its history differs from the industrial past of the Bendix buildings and the fortification history of the Lüdinghauser Gate. The three topics can therefore be considered in terms of different interests without treating them as the same.
The digital city tour in Dülmen offers recommended routes, but can also be customized to create your own. Information about the locations is available via QR codes. You can follow suggested routes or choose the order in which you visit the sites. The QR codes provide additional information directly about each location.
Wild Horses and Guided Tours
The Dülmen Wild Horse Roundup takes place every year on the last Saturday in May. One-year-old stallions are rounded up from the herd. This recurring date makes it easier to plan when to visit, but event logistics may change. So check the latest dates and information about how the event will run before your trip.
A guided tour in the Merfelder Bruch nature reserve is a separate experience: visitors can observe around 400 wild horses and learn about the herd and its habitat. The Wild Horse Roundup and the guided tour have different focuses—one is an annual event, the other offers observation and information as part of a tour. The wild horse enclosure in Merfelder Bruch is about 12 km west of the city of Dülmen. Check the latest visitor information before setting out.
Another guided tour takes you around Haus Visbeck and the historic wayside shrine. Public dates for this tour are listed for 2026; check whether a suitable date is available before your trip. The route around Haus Visbeck and the shrine is a separate option for anyone interested in historic sites.
Cycling and Hiking Options in the Wider Coesfeld Destination
The wider Coesfeld destination offers a broader regional perspective: the Coesfeld district is notable for its exceptionally high concentration of palaces, castles and historic aristocratic estates. The district has an extensive network of several hundred kilometers of well-maintained cycling paths. It connects towns, municipalities and districts and passes through the parkland of the Münsterland region. The numbered junction network allows flexible route planning using numbered points and freely chosen sequences.
The specific routes mentioned also relate to places in the wider Coesfeld destination: the 30-kilometer Baumberger Ludgerusweg runs between Stift Tilbeck and Coesfeld. Coesfeld and Lette have local circular hiking trails ranging from 4 to 20 kilometers. This information helps distinguish regional options by distance and route type. Check the latest route information and conditions before setting out.
Discover more destinations: Havixbeck, Rosendahl, Billerbeck, Ascheberg, Lüdinghausen, Olfen, Nordkirchen, Nottuln.
Go to the wider travel overview: Coesfeld.
