Note: The northwestern German city of Essen is situated near the Ruhr river in the district of Düsseldorf in the state of North Rhine -Westphalia. It grew up around a Benedictine convent founded in 852; the convent's abbess and the abbot of a local monastery ruled the town for centuries, until the institutions were dissolved in 1802 and local governance passed to Prussia. The town grew with the industrial expansion of the 19th century to become the largest industrial city of the Ruhr district. The French occupied it from 1923 to 1925. In World War II it served as the center of German war industry, and as such was heavily bombed. It has been considerably rebuilt and most of its building today date from the 20th and 21st centuries. Its cultural institutions include an opera house and company, the Museum Folkwang that houses 19th- and 20th-century art, and the Villa Hügel, formerly the residence of the Krupp family, famous as industrialists and arms manufacturers, which now hosts for cultural events and conferences. Essen is a railway junction and commercial trade center. Its economic activities include coal processing, steel making, and the manufacture chemicals, glass items, textiles, and precision instruments. Despite the industrialization, the southern part of the city has plenty of parks and small wooded areas. The estimated population for 2004 was 581,600.
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