They Built a Forest Inside a 100-Meter Gas Tank

I walked into an old gas tank expecting an art installation. What I found was something closer to a cathedral — a 35-meter tree made of light, a real skeleton of an animal extinct for 7,000 years, and a dark room that plays you the sound of sunrise on five continents. If you're planning your own visit to Mythos Wald at the Gasometer Oberhausen, here's everything I wish I'd known before I walked in.

Getting There

The Gasometer is at Arenastraße 11, 46047 Oberhausen. By public transport: from Oberhausen Hauptbahnhof, take any bus or train toward 'Neue Mitte' — it's a short walk from there. Local transport runs through STOAG, regional through VRR, and long-distance through Deutsche Bahn. By car: follow the A42 to the Oberhausen-Zentrum exit and head toward the city center — it's well signposted, and there's ample parking on site. By bike: about 10 minutes from the main station via Hansastraße and Duisburger Straße; the Gasometer sits on cycling node 9 of the radrevier.ruhr network.

The Gasometer Itself

For almost 70 years, this tank stored industrial gas for the steelworks that built the region. It stands about 117 meters tall — big enough to swallow a cathedral — and instead of tearing it down, the city emptied it and turned it into the tallest exhibition hall in Europe. Walking in, the light drops away and the ceiling disappears into darkness you can't measure. People go quiet almost instantly. Mythos Wald ('Myth of the Forest') is the third chapter of a trilogy staged here — after 'Das zerbrechliche Paradies' (2021) on climate and 'Planet Ozean' (2024) on the ocean — running 20 March–30 December 2026.

"The Tree" — The Centerpiece

At the middle of the tank stands 'The Tree' — 35 meters tall, the largest indoor light sculpture in the world, built by Ars Electronica Solutions with music by Rupert Huber. Light rises from the roots through the trunk and pulses up into the branches, shifting between blue, green and gold. An elevator carries visitors up alongside it, level with the light the whole way. Stairs nearby let people just sit and watch — strangers, side by side, in silence.

The Best Spot in the Building

At the very base of the tree there's a bean-bag zone where you lie flat on your back and look straight up the trunk, all 35 meters, into the crown. It's the single best way to experience the installation — lying down, the light has no edges, no floor, no sense of the room around you. These spots fill up fast for good reason: if one is free when you arrive, take it immediately.

Beauty and What We're Doing to It

The exhibition floor holds huge photographs hung from the ceiling and lit from within — giant sequoias from California, the dragon trees of Socotra, the largest flower on Earth. Real taxidermy animals stand between the images: fox, wild boar, a lynx mid-stretch, an owl, a resting brown bear (on loan from Museum Koenig Bonn and LWL-Museum Münster). The centerpiece of this section is a real skeleton of the giant deer, extinct for roughly 7,000 years, with antlers over 3 meters wide — actual bones, not a replica. The exhibition doesn't shy from the harder side either: images of deforestation and an interactive Esri display ('Der lebendige Wald') showing roughly 6.7 million hectares of primary rainforest lost in a single year.

Global Sunrise — The Sound Room

On the ground floor, a dark room with benches and bean bags plays 'Global Sunrise' — a surround-sound recording of dawn breaking across five continents, captured by sound artist Chris Watson. Real birds, real wind, real morning, moving all around you. It's one of the most genuinely relaxing rooms I've been in — worth staying in longer than you plan to.

The Roof

After the tree and the exhibition floor, an elevator takes you up to the panoramic roof — 117 meters up, with views across Oberhausen and the whole Ruhr region. It's the natural ending to the visit: the same tank that once held industrial fuel now opens onto a view of the region it helped power.

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