Düsseldorf has long been the headquarters city for the Ruhr, Germany’s powerhouse industrial region. It is the place for worker relaxation and for the spending of big industrialist salaries, which in turn patronises great arts and culture in a succession of big public galleries. It pays for eyecatching city architecture, too, and the net result is the secondmost liveable city in Germany (after Munich).

The city’s mostly pedestrianized centre is so new and modern it feels like an architect’s model. There’s Daniel Liebeskind’s curvaceous Kö-Bogen, whose ‘cuts’ in its façade sprout with greenery, and nearby Kö-Bogen II, a shopping centre disguised under beech hedges. Its most famous more traditional shopping boulevard, the ‘Kö’ – Königsallee – looks like a slice of Amsterdam, running as it does down both sides of a leafy canal, lined with flagship stores of famous names and patrolled by the unfeasibly tanned.

The old town

Beyond the Kö towards the Rhine is old Düsseldorf, a network of cobbled streets busy with bars and restaurants. There’s not a lot in the way of truly old architecture here but what it lacks in antiquity it makes up for in conviviality. The nightlife is vibrant, particularly along Bolkerstrasse, although you might want to steer clear on a football night.

The speciality of some of the old town taverns is Altbier, whose darker colour comes from the roasting of the malt. It is unpasteurised, so best drunk fresh at traditional locations like Uerige, Füchschen or Schlüssel, where the breweries themselves are directly on site. Here there’s a whole culture around drinking, mostly at convivial standing tables, where service is by middle-aged men (Köbes) who record your tally with marks on your beer mat.

Bordering the old town is the Rhine, with fully laden barges lumbering laboriously around its giant bend. Sheep graze on the floodplain on the far bank, while the near bank is lined with a long promenade, hugely popular amongst locals when the weather is kind. There are bars here, but the most dramatic view is from the top of the 240 metre Rheinturm, looking down on the river and the parliament building.

The city has a big encampment of galleries and concert halls – mostly just downriver from the old town – with a particularly large and significant art academy. No fewer than four art movements started here in the 1960s, during the time when the likes of Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter were students. These days its K20 art gallery has one of the biggest collection of 20^th century artists – Picasso, Kandinsky, Klee, Miro, Chagall etc – of any institutions in the world.

Art in the region has always been cutting edge, but not always recognised as such. Back in the 1980s, Joseph Beuys placed five kilograms of butter in an exhibition in the art academy, and called it ‘Fat Corner’. Eventually a gallery cleaner mistakenly cleared it away. Ever since then there’s been a German saying: Ist das Kunst oder kann das weg? “Is it art, or can I throw it away?”

It is the year of beer in Germany, in recognition of the 500^th anniversary of the Rheinheitsgebot, the beer purity law. So to celebrate the occasion I’ve just been on a beer tasting in Düsseldorf.

It happens that this city, despite being massively damaged in World War II, still has no fewer than five traditional brewery pubs (ie where beer is actually brewed on the premises). They are within walking distance of each other in the Old Town, the highest density of brewpubs anywhere in Europe. And the Düsseldorf beer is not the straw-coloured pilsner typical of most of Germany, but a much darker and delicious ale rather like British bitter.

We started in Kürzer, an unassuming place popular with a younger, trendy crowd. The beer tasted nutty and ultra fresh, piped from the tanks at the back direct into the taps at the front.

From there we moved onto Füchschen – the ‘Little Fox’ – a much larger and older place, dating back to 1848, with most of its customers standing, or leaning on chest-high tables. This, apparently, is part of the etiquette: if you are a solo drinker, or friends open to general conversation with others, then you stand in this area, aptly known as the Schwemme, or ‘floodplains’. If you want to keep to yourselves, you go to a table at the back.

Next was Schumacher, also large and old, but more elegant and restrained – apparently because it is run by women. Here I learned about key personnel: the Baas, who is the chief brewer, and the Köbes, the waiters, who are the high priests of beer. The latter will keep filling your glass, recording each refill with a tick on your coaster, until such time as you place that coaster on top of your glass indicating you’ve had enough.

By the time we get to Zum Schlüssel, number four on our list, and a big place with a thousand seats, I was getting hungry. There’s not a lot of choice (drinks are either beer, water or apple juice) so I wasn’t expecting much variety on the menu.  Flönz im Bierteig – black pudding in batter – didn’t sound very healthy, but it went down well.

The last port of call was Ueriger, another big one, and the third biggest brewpub in Germany. The beer here was incredibly bitter, but after the first sip or two you no longer notice it. And the trays of Frikadellen (homemade meatballs) with mustard that did the rounds of the various rooms really helped the medicine go down.

You can visit all five brewpubs on a two-hour guided tour with Altbier Safari, for €24.50, a price that includes a 0.2l glass of beer in each.