The Dortmund-Ems Canal connects the port of Dortmund with the North Sea port in Emden. It crosses the area of the city of Münster over a length of 26 kilometers and is mainly used for freight traffic (picture above). The inhabitants of the city call it just "canal" for short.

In the south of the city, there is a transshipment point for heavy-lift vessels in the "Hansa-Business-Park" industrial area, which was put into operation in 2012. The port of Münster branches off from the Dortmund-Ems Canal and, due to its location, was used for freight traffic in the past.

You can relax by the canal in various ways. On the canal promenade along the canal you can walk, hike or bike. This stretch in Münster is part of the Dortmund-Ems Canal Route, a bike path along the canal. Alternatively, you can simply sit on the grassy areas along the water and even swim in the canal as well. However, you should pay attention to passing cargo ships and behave accordingly. This also applies to the rowers who regularly train on the canal.

It was built at the end of the 19th century and was one of the major inland waterways at that time. It was ceremonially opened in August 1899, but by that time it had long been used for goods traffic. The construction of the Dortmund-Ems Canal was intended, among other things, to relieve the railroad. Due to the increase in freight traffic, it was no longer able to transport enough goods from the Ruhr region. The canal also enabled the steel industry in the eastern Ruhr region to reduce locational disadvantages compared with steel mills on the Rhine.

Over time, the canal was expanded again and again as freight traffic on it increased. Bridges, for example, were renewed or raised so that ships could pass under them. Where this was not possible, so-called "second passages" were built, which left the old canal route and ran along other paths. Where differences in altitude had to be bridged, as in Münster, floodgates were built on the canal. Münster's floodgate consists of three flood chambers and compensates for an altitude drop of 6.2 meters (picture below).

After the end of the Second World War, war damage had to be repaired on the canal as everywhere else. Damaged dams blocked the flow of water, leaving sections of the canal dry. And destroyed bridges blocked both the waterway and land transport routes. The British occupation forces ensured that the canal was cleared quickly, so that navigation could be reopened as early as the beginning of 1946.

More interesting facts about the Dortmund-Ems Canal as a whole can be found in the Wikipedia article about the canal and on the SkipperGuide website (Wikipedia article available in Enlish, website only available in German).