Düsseldorf: the Rhine, fashion and Little Tokyo

Unofficial capital of German fashion on the Rhine, Düsseldorf is also home to continental Europe's largest Japanese community, which grew around the local headquarters of major Japanese corporations since the 1950s.

The center is comfortably explored on foot along the river.

The Altstadt, the old town rebuilt after the Second World War bombing, earns locally the nickname 'world's longest bar counter' for the concentration of breweries serving the local Altbier, a high-fermentation beer style.

The Königsallee, a tree-lined boulevard divided at its midpoint by a 19th-century canal, lines luxury boutiques on both sides, becoming from the 1950s onward the symbol of high-end shopping in Germany.

The Japanese quarter around Immermannstraße offers ramen restaurants and Japanese-style convenience stores, plus a zen garden donated to the city and maintained according to traditional techniques.

The Rhine embankment walk, upgraded in the 1990s after the high-speed road running along the bank was buried underground, offers direct views of the Rheinturm tower and the undulating buildings of the Neuer Zollhof designed by Frank Gehry.

The Japanese quarter and the Königsallee tell two different forms of international openness, one born of commerce and one from fashion, growing almost in parallel just blocks apart.

Along the Rhine, Gehry's buildings show that this same openness continues to manifest itself in the city's most recent architecture.