Solingen is known internationally as the “City on the Cutting Edge”, and the town name is also a protected trademark for high-quality knives and scissors. The independent city with around 163,000 inhabitants is geographically located in the Bergisches Land region, is culturally at home in the Rhine-land and is politically integrated in the Federal State of North- Rhine/Westphalia.
The economic structure has changed during the last decades: scissors, knives and cutlery are still an important factor in local business, but other industrial branches have grown up. Today Solingen is an prime address for surface treatments and galvanotechnology.
Solingen - The green city The visitor will not notice that Solingen is an old in- dustrial city. The city is green, with a high quality of life. There is no historical town centre, but this is more than compensated by the numerous suburban centres and rural settle- ments which have merged along the ridges and valleys which hem the major access routes. Between them are valleys which have never been com- pletely cultivated and today form the green oases which break up the conurbation. The wooded steep valleys of the Wupper Hills frame the city to the East and the South.
