Industrial tourism

In some cases, one particular commodity may be closely identified to the identity of the community itself; mention Hershey, Pennsylvania and one thinks of candy, mention Churchill Falls and a close association to hydroelectric power immediately comes to light. What would Detroit and its suburbs be without their long historic association with the automobile?

There is a slight overlap with agrotourism in that many regions are closely tied to manufacture of distinctive foodstuffs. Wine tours in Niagara, the Napa Valley or France, visits to cheese makers in the Netherlands, Kentucky Bourbon Distilleries Tours in the United States all sport a distinctly regional flavor as an opportunity to see where a local product is made.

Understand

Industry has existed since ancient times, but for most of history it involved a marginal part of the world's population, as most people earned their living in hunting and gathering, and later in farming.

The history of steam power and the Industrial Revolution begins approximately where the early modern and colonial era artisanal handicraft end. The initial source of power was water to operate streamside mills; this gave way to steam and then to electricity. Great Britain was a forerunner in this process; see Industrial Britain.

Railroads were an important component of the Industrial Revolution, and heritage railways often reconstruct industrial technology of the steam era. On the other end of the time (and speed) scale, high speed rail has nothing museum-like to it but can also make the journey the destination. In some towns, a former mine site may be open for guided tours. Some former industrial sites are now museums.

A few locations have (or had) entire company towns built around a single industry or manufacturer.

The second industrial revolution began in the 1870s and saw the rise of new great powers, such as the United States, Germany and Japan.

Automotive history is a common theme for museums, along with rail travel and other transport infrastructure. Trains that used to carry kings and empresses have a particularly high chance of having been preserved and they are often centerpieces of their respective museums. Route 66 in particular is closely intertwined with nostalgia for the automotive manufacturers of yesteryear.

Deindustrialization is the dismantling of industrial facilities, or in some cases downsizing of workforce due to automation. Since the mid-20th century, many industries in high-income countries have shut down. If there are few other jobs in the region, they leave behind ghost towns. Cities with a growing service sector, such as New York City, Berlin or London have seen redevelopment of industrial areas for housing, offices and hospitality. In some cases, whole districts have been leveled, and in other cases, much of the original architecture remains. See Stockholm environmentalist tour for a case study.

Factory tours

A few working industrial companies, as a promotional or public relations exercise, may operate visitors centers, conduct guided factory tours or provide opportunities to see products being manufactured.

An electric generating station may want to state its case as to the relative merits of splitting an atom or damming a mighty river. Manufacturers of handicrafts may wish to demonstrate how their products are locally hand-made. Some manufacturers of food or consumer goods operate a store on the factory site, inviting the voyager to watch cheese or candy actually being locally made before buying some to sample or take home.

Sciences and technologies

Industrial tourism overlaps science to some degree. Nuclear tourism, automotive history, aviation history, space flight sites, mining tourism, textiles, hacker tourism and math tourism explore different technological fields.

Destinations

30°0′0″N 10°0′0″W

Map of Industrial tourism

Asia

China

41.819646123.3496211 China Museum of Industry (中国工业博物馆) (Shenyang, Liaoning Province). Tells the story of the industrialisation of China. The museum is built on the site of an old foundry, which has been largely preserved in its original state.
29.473323106.4882442 Chongqing Industrial Museum (重庆工业博物馆, 重庆工业文化博览园) (Chongqing). Sited on the grounds of an old steel mill, this museum tells the story of how Chongqing became a major industrial city. (updated Jan 2020)
30.632191114.4000483 Museum of Wuhan Iron and Steel Group Corp (中国武钢博物馆, WISCO Museum) (Qingshan District, Wuhan, Hubei Province). The official museum of the Wuhan Iron and Steel Group Corp (WISCO). Founded in 1958, WISCO was the first iron and steel company to be established after the founding of the People's Republic. The museum has exhibitions about the history of the company and the Chinese steel industry in general.
34.573806105.755994 Tianshui Industry Museum (天水工业博物馆) (Tianshui, Gansu Province). A former electrical equipment factory that has been turned into a museum. It displays various types of old machinery and tells the story of the city’s industrial history. (updated Mar 2024)

Japan

The town of 35.0833137.1561 Toyota in Japan is closely associated with the motorcar manufacturer; there is a Toyota Automobile Museum and an art museum. Toyota is a brief jaunt from the major industrial city of Nagoya, which offers a tremendous amount of tours of factories making everything from beer and sake to plastic model food.
Squeezed gracelessly between Tokyo and Yokohama, Kawasaki forms the industrial core of Asia's largest metropolitan area. Take a night cruise past the glowing, steam-belching heavy industry plants along its waterfront and feel the craze of kōjō moe, "factory infatuation."
The world heritage listed Tomioka silk mill, Japan's first modern silk production factory, has now been turned into a museum. It's also a chance to try operating a historical silk-reeling machine yourself.

Turkey

41.817527.8141675 Demirköy Foundry (near Demirköy). The ruins of a medieval industrial complex where iron ore was mined, processed and shipped for further processing to the imperial cannon factory in Istanbul.
40.17729.0716 Tofaş Anatolian Car Museum (Bursa). Bursa is a major centre of Turkish automotive industry. This museum showcases its evolution from horse-drawn carriages to the present day.
40.229.0527 Museum of Textile Industry (Bursa). Bursa has also been a major centre of textile industry, for much longer than the similar role it played for automotive. This is an old wool mill, exhibiting machinery and other paraphernalia related to the textile industry. An adjacent, but separate Energy Museum was the power station driving the mill.
41.066528.94618 Santral İstanbul (Eyüp, Istanbul). The earliest power plant of the Ottoman Empire is now a contemporary art museum with a section kept in working condition and dedicated as the Energy Museum.
40.997529.0433339 Müze Gazhane (Kadıköy, Istanbul). The late 19th-century town gas plant now houses a climate museum.

Europe

Finland

61.523.766710 Tampere. Known as a historical workers' city, Tampere is famous for its industrial history and its attractions include many museums on the subject, including Werstas and Vapriikki.
At the world heritage listed Verla groundwood and board mill, now a museum, you can learn about 19th- and early 20th-century paper production.

France

Toulouse is home to the main factory of Airbus.

Germany

The 51.4537.4732 Ruhr has been the biggest heavy industries region in Continental Europe since the 19th century. There are dozens of disused cokeries, steel mills and other plants converted into museums, venues or parks along the Industrial Heritage Trail. Essen's Zollverein coal pit and cokery complex is a World Heritage site.
The Fagus Factory in Alfeld (Leine) that has produced shoelasts since the 1910s (it is still operational) is one of the first works of modernist architecture in the world and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2011.
Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, city associated with the development of zeppelin airships, has the Zeppelin Museum of technology and art and the Dornier Aviation and Aerospace Museum
Herzogenaurach would be a perfectly unremarkable small town in Franconia like many others - if it hadn't been for brothers Adi and Rudolf Dassler who founded two of the biggest sports companies in the world: Adidas and Puma. Production has long since moved elsewhere, but both companies have several stores.
Ludwigshafen, Visitor Center of BASF, the world's largest chemical producer
The Deutsches Museum in Munich is a museum of very close to everything science and technology with its own rather interesting century-long history. Highlights include experiments with high voltage or a life-size V2 rocket on display.
The BMW Welt and BMW Museum is in Munich, as well.
51.3127811.1728711 Sugar factory Oldisleben, Esperstedter Straße 9 (Oldisleben, Thuringia). tours (roughly 2½ hours) upon request in the summer season hourly tours starting at 10:00 on the second Sunday in September. One of the oldest and longest serving sugar factories in Europe if not the world, this factory was shut down in 1990 upon the collapse of the GDR and after the last harvest had been converted to sugar. The factory still boasts original steam engines that had been in use for over a century and was in many ways a "working museum" even during its last decades of work. The factory was declared a monument in 1989 and preserved as a museum upon being shut down. Each tour begins with a 20-minute documentary movie on the last harvest of 1990. (updated Oct 2016)
Stuttgart, centre of automotive industry, with the Mercedes-Benz Museum and Porsche Museum
Autostadt Wolfsburg, extensive museum and theme park of Germany's biggest automotive producer Volkswagen.

Russia

Mining industry ("Gornozavodskaya") "civilization". In the 18—19th centuries, successful surveys of various natural resources gave birth to a new Ural "civilization", now used to be called "mining civilization" ("Gornozavodskaya"). Ethnographer and literature theorist Prof. Bogoslovsky proved its existence. From the early 18th to the middle of 19th century, 260 industrial cities were built in the Urals, i.e. more than half of the cities built in the rest of Russia within the same period. These cities had a distinct purpose and specific style of artistic design. In the first quarter of the 19th century, industrial cities grew big enough to have ensemble architecture, a governorate (regional) architect, and architects of mining factories and areas. A significant part of the Ural culture, these cities were crucial for global science, technology and art. In the 18th century, industrial cities made the Urals not only the area of largest industrial construction, but also the world's largest metallurgy center.
Country of Towns. As early as 3,600—3,800 years ago, the South Urals were home of a number of middle Bronze Age (~2,000 BC) fortified settlements of the Sintashta culture, found in the 1970s and 1980s. It was named a proto-city civilization, Russia's oldest Country of Cities. Its citizens knew metal production technology and could easily process granite, quartz and other rather hard rocks.

Sweden

67.848920.30273 Norrbotten Megasystem. An industrial cluster in Arctic Sweden, around a 500-kilometre railroad. It includes the mining town of Kiruna, which is relocated during the 2020s.
Bergslagen is Sweden's traditional mining and metalworking district.
59.3245318.1013712 Skansen (Stockholm/Djurgården). Founded in 1891, Skansen is the world's oldest full-scale open-air museum, containing a zoo of Nordic wildlife, as well as over 150 historic buildings from previous centuries, from all parts of Sweden. Guides in historic costumes further enhance this attraction, and demonstrate domestic crafts such as weaving, spinning, and glass blowing from before and during the Industrial Revolution.
57.10555612.39027813 Grimeton Radio Station, Radiostationen 72 (10 km east of Varberg). The only remaining radio station of the 1920s long wave network is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. During summer months it is possible to visit the site at Grimeton, with the machine transmitter used for VLF transmissions on 17.2 kHz. It is the only workable machine transmitter in the world!
60.88983514.37379714 Siljansfors Skogsmuseum (By the route E45, some 18 km South-West of central Mora), ☏ +46 70-634 34 63. An open-air museum about forestry and Mora's industrial heritage.
Stockholm environmentalist tour showcases initiatives to make infrastructure more sustainable.

North America

Chrysler in Auburn Hills used to operate a museum, which is now only open during specific annual events; Ford in Dearborn also devotes a museum to Michigan USA car culture. Oshawa, Ontario, is home to a Canadian Automotive Museum and is closely tied to General Motors.
Seattle is home to the Museum of Flight, which incorporates the original barn where Boeing was founded as part of the museum exhibits. The suburb of Everett is home to Boeing's main factory, though factory tours have been suspended indefinitely due to COVID.
The Cape Breton Miners' Museum in Nova Scotia offers mine tours, as does the former coal mine in Springhill.
Davis (Oklahoma) offers a chance to see the manufacturing of Bedré Fine Chocolate, offering a free tour.
In St. Stephen, New Brunswick, candy maker Ganong does not offer a modern factory tour, but their old factory is The Chocolate Museum with a guided tour and a chocolatier in a studio making gourmet hand-dipped chocolates.

South America

Fray Bentos, Uruguay, is home to the former Liebig's Extract of Meat Company, formerly a major producer of meat products that were exported around the world. Production has resumed on a smaller scale but the huge, nowadays world heritage listed facilities together with the museum, are more of an attraction.

Travel topics

Industrial Britain and the Industrialization of the United States cover part of the history of the Industrial Revolution.
Industrial tourism in India
Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution
History of organized labor
RMS Titanic describes the 1912 tragic collision of technology and nature.

Itineraries

American Industry Tour through the US northeast, the former industrial heartland and "Rust Belt"
Bertha Benz Memorial Route in Southwestern Germany – follow in the tracks of the first intercity automotive test pilot
Industrial Heritage Trail (Route der Industriekultur) in Western Germany
Motorcities Tour in and around Detroit

Respect

The openness of active industrial sites to tourism is, for the most part, very limited. While some manufacturers offer a tour or a description of what they do as a public relations exercise, much or most of the facility is likely to be off-limits to protect equipment and commercial trade secrets; restrictions are also applied for safety reasons. Many or most sites restrict or prohibit travel photography. The only access is usually as part of a strictly-controlled guided tour; you are not free to leave the group and wander around the production areas independently.

Restrictions often apply to protect product and process; a manufacturer will protect semiconductors from static electricity, valuables from theft or foodstuffs from all manner of contamination. The only opportunity to watch that cheese or candy being made often will be through a wall of glass windows from a visitors gallery if separating viewers from active production protects the quality or integrity of the finished product.

Museum sites are less restrictive as they are often purpose-built for tourism and visitors. The status of other former (or abandoned) manufacturing sites varies; various hazards may still be present and the leave-no-trace principle applies to protect the site.

Stay safe

A working factory, despite best efforts of workers, management and unions to build a safer workplace, is filled with powerful machinery, potentially hazardous materials and all manner of processes and equipment which may require specific precautions. Factory visits will be carefully organized, supervised tours and there will usually be a visible gap (ranging from a windowed permanent visitors' gallery to a simple yellow line on the factory floor) separating visitors from work in progress. Various protective devices (safety glasses, earplugs, hard hats, steel-toe boots, work gloves) will be needed and supplied, depending on the job site. A necktie quickly becomes a noose if caught in fast-moving industrial machinery; jewelry and loose clothing may also be restricted for safety reasons. Most factory tours will impose a minimum age for visitors if safety hazards are present. Your hosts will inform you of any specific required precautions on arrival.