About Ratingen

Ratingen is the name of the host city of this year’s FIIC World Games. It is a middlesized town, with a little less than 100.000 inhabitants, very close to Düsseldorf, the capital of the state North Rhine-Westfalia and to the Ruhr area, one of the biggest industrial areas in the world. It is in the western part of Germany, not far away from the Netherlands or Belgium.

Ratingen was founded officially as a city in 1276 but there was a village since around 500 AD. In 1783 the first factory outside of England was built up in the city of Ratingen and during the 19^th and 20^th century the city became an industrial imprint. Nowadays Ratingen is a centre for high technologies and is sometimes compared with the “silicon valley”.

The city of Ratingen is famous for a beautiful old town centre with many little shops, some nice pubs, parks, and the old buildings and churches. Very famous is also the beer of the region around – the Alt beer. This dark beer tastes different but most of the people, who ever tried, love it.