Rheydter Höhe

The Rheydter Höhe is a man-made hill in Mönchengladbach’s southern district of Pongs. Built from rubble after the Second World War, it reaches 133 metres above sea level and is the city’s highest point. At 64 metres tall, it also ranks as Germany’s tallest Trümmerberg, a type of hill formed from wartime debris. Locally the mound is called Monte Clamotte or Rheydter Müllberg, names that reflect its rubble and refuse origins. The plateau offers wide views across the surrounding landscape. The hill was created in 1945 from rubble left by bombing that destroyed 65 per cent of Mönchengladbach and Rheydt. In the 1950s household waste was dumped on top, then covered with one to two metres of humus to allow plants to grow. By the 1990s gases from the buried rubbish escaped, though today no signs remain. Rain has since exposed fragments of plastic bags thirty metres below the plateau along the footpath. At the northern base lies a water play park, a pond and the Rheydt municipal forest. The forest provides barbecue sites, a minigolf course, a café and spaces for other activities. To the south and west, the Dahlener Straße road and the A 61 motorway run past the hill, linking Rheydt with Rheindahlen.