Fifty artists from 17 countries have taken over a UNESCO World Heritage ironworks in Germany for the Urban Art Biennale 2026. It’s a hugely unusual site for art – an industrial relic, long closed for business – but it gives artists a huge canvas to create upon. They’ve responded with a whole range of artworks: a message painted in giant letters across a rooftop, visible only from 45m up; white industrial fabric stretched across century-old furnace halls; a van, tyres and debris coated in paint like a Pompeii of the fossil fuel age. All this inside a sprawling 60,000 sq m maze of chimneys and rusting machinery that hasn't changed since production stopped in 1986. The Volklingen Ironworks is the only intact example of its kind left in western Europe and North America. Now it's one of the continent's most dramatic art venues. #art #industry #unesco #germany