The Auto­stadt Wolfs­burg

“People, cars and what moves them” has been the motto of the Auto­stadt in Wolfs­burg since it opened in 2000. So what moves more than two mil­lion people each year to vis­it the com­mu­nic­a­tions plat­form of the Volk­swa­gen Group? Not only car en­thu­si­asts are at­trac­ted to the theme and ad­ven­ture park, but also art and cul­ture lov­ers and gour­mands as well as those keen on ar­chi­tec­ture and design. Ex­cur­sions on the Mit­tel­landkanal with the whole fam­ily - wheth­er for an un­for­get­table day or an en­tire week­end - are par­tic­u­larly pop­u­lar. The Auto­stadt has far more than just cars: it wel­comes vis­it­ors to the world of mo­bil­ity 363 days a year (364 days in 2020).

ZeitHaus: the multi-brand car mu­seum

A day in the Auto­stadt of­fers so many pos­sib­il­it­ies: the ZeitHaus is one of the most pop­u­lar at­trac­tions with­in the auto­mot­ive theme park. The Car Mu­seum col­lec­tion fea­tures mul­tiple brands and in­cludes ap­prox­im­ately 250 vehicles of over 60 dif­fer­ent makes: from the Benz pat­ent mo­tor­car mod­el 1 via the Ford Mod­el T and the Bugatti At­lantic right up to the Volk­swa­gen Beetle. The ex­hib­i­tion presents around 100 vehicles which have sig­ni­fic­antly im­pacted the de­vel­op­ment of the auto­mobile. Be­cause both the mod­ern and clas­sic cars are fre­quently driv­en in clas­sic ral­lies and trips, the mod­els on dis­play at the ZeitHaus change reg­u­larly. All the vehicles rep­res­ent mile­stones in mo­bil­ity in terms of their tech­no­logy, design, man­u­fac­ture or concept.

Ex­traordin­ary driv­ing ex­per­i­ences

Vis­it­ors can ex­per­i­ence the off-road qual­it­ies of the Volk­swa­gen Tou­areg, Am­arok, Ti­guan and T-Roc as well as the Škoda Ka­roq and Ko­di­aq on de­mand­ing ter­rain: obstacles such as wa­ter trenches, flights of stairs or an over-di­men­sioned seesaw on the two all-ter­rain tracks put vis­it­ors’ driv­ing skills to the test and guar­an­tee pure driv­ing fun! The safety train­ing course com­bines im­press­ive driv­ing ex­per­i­ences with prac­tice in safe driv­ing on wet roads or icy moun­tains. Sus­tain­able mo­bil­ity al­lows vis­it­ors to ex­per­i­ence a fleet of mod­ern and fu­ture-ori­ented elec­tric mod­els and hy­brid vehicles, which can be taken on free test drives.

LEVEL GREEN – The idea of sus­tain­ab­il­ity

How does the way we live today af­fect the lives of gen­er­a­tions to come? The per­man­ent ex­hib­i­tion LEVEL GREEN – The idea of sus­tain­ab­il­ity in­vites vis­it­ors to pon­der how we shape our fu­ture. The net­work-style struc­ture of the ex­hib­i­tion space is de­rived from the fa­mil­i­ar PET sym­bol. It cre­ates a con­nec­tion between the 26 mul­ti­me­dia and in­ter­act­ive ex­hib­its which tease out the in­ter­re­la­tion­ships between so­ci­ety, the eco­nomy and the en­vir­on­ment, provid­ing a great deal of food for thought. The vari­ous as­pects of the sus­tain­ab­il­ity theme in­spire vis­it­ors to de­vel­op their own views on how we can best fu­ture-proof our ex­ist­ence.

Good food in the Auto­stadt: or­gan­ic, re­gion­al and sea­son­al

En­joy­able and healthy nu­tri­tion takes centre stage at the Auto­stadt. The kit­chens in the nine Auto­stadt res­taur­ants use sus­tain­ably pro­duced, sea­son­al products, vir­tu­ally all of which are or­gan­ic. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity, re­spons­ib­il­ity and aware­ness of the loc­al re­gion define the Auto­stadt’s re­la­tion­ships with its long-stand­ing part­ners. Bread, pasta and ice cream is made fresh every day in the three in-house kit­chens. Ve­get­ari­an and ve­gan meals are placed on a par with healthy fish and meat dishes on menus which al­ways of­fer new taste ex­per­i­ences.

There are three res­taur­ants in The Ritz-Carlton Hotel: the Aqua with its three Mich­elin stars, where head chef Sven Elver­feld has achieved in­ter­na­tion­al fame. The con­cepts of Terra and Deli are based on the range of food avail­able in the Auto­stadt – here, too, the pro­duce comes from re­gion­al small and mi­cro-en­ter­prises.

Top-class cul­ture and art

The events in sum­mer and winter at­tract nu­mer­ous vis­it­ors to the Mit­tel­landkanal. The float­ing is­land in the har­bour basin, live mu­sic and in­ter­act­ive formats across the en­tire park and la­goon land­scape cre­ate the per­fect hol­i­day mood in sum­mer for both chil­dren and adults. Fi­nally, at the end of the year the Auto­stadt is trans­formed in­to a ma­gic­al winter land­scape - fea­tur­ing ice dan­cing per­form­ances, an ex­tens­ive winter mar­ket, real moun­tains of snow and a large area for ice-skat­ing.

Sus­tain­able park land­scape

The Auto­stadt pro­motes the pre­ser­va­tion of biod­iversity in flora and fauna on site and in the sur­round­ing area. A var­ied out­door area de­signed with flower­ing and grass strips is not only pleas­ing to the eye, but also en­sures year-round food for in­sects and birds in the urb­an en­vir­on­ment. In this way, the unique park land­scape is now a hab­it­at for nu­mer­ous "exot­ic nat­ive" plants and an­im­als such as but­ter­flies, bees and geese. The park is an ex­ample of how biod­iversity can be sens­ibly im­ple­men­ted and sen­su­ally ex­per­i­enced in the city.