The Old Harbor of Neuss with a View of St. Quirinus

The medieval Neuss harbor is located on an arm of the Rhine below today's market. It silted up during the late Middle Ages so that ships on the river could no longer reach the port. In 1818 the Town Council decided to widen and deepen the Erft, which was now only ten meters wide and whose lower course flowed into the old Rhine arm. But only between 1835 and 1838 the lower reaches of the Erft were dredged to make today’s Harbor Basin 1. As industrialization increased in the second half of the 19th century the water routes grew in importance because raw materials and other goods could be transported faster and more cheaply by ship than over land. The Erft Canal soon proves inadequate in the face of rapidly increasing freight traffic. In 1911 the city began to systematically expand the harbor and build four new harbor basins in Hammfeld parallel to the Erft Canal. The area around the new harbor was used specifically as industrial sites.