Essener Lichtwochen
When the days shorten and the nights lengthen, it’s time for Essen’s city center to shine! From November until January 6th 2019, you can visit the city to enjoy “Essen Light Weeks”, a celebration of light that showcases creative, innovative and simply beautiful lights of all sorts that fill the city with a remarkable holiday atmosphere.
The 69th Essen Light Weeks began with the Essen Light Festival, which attracted some 300,000 visitors to the city center between October 26th and November 4th 2018 to enjoy the 18 impressive light installations and video mappings designed and installed local and international artists.
Significant attention to detail and craftsmanship goes into creating the lighting displays for both the Essen Light Festival and Essen Light Weeks. Here at MK Illumination, we created all of our pieces in-house at our production facility in Slovakia. The unique pieces of light art that we contributed are unique and finished by hand with great skill. To give you an example of the time and effort involved, the deer that we designed for the events took 6 full weeks to produce!
This year, MK Illumination will use over 100,000 light points to transform the city center into a one-of-a-kind light-filled experience. Our lighting installations have been custom designed and combined in ways that highlight the city of Essen in all its glory. Essen is a diverse city, one that is making great strides in the areas of innovation, creativity and tourism, and it was essential that our contribution to their lighting events emphasized these elements whilst remaining true to the identity of the city.
Unexpected chandeliers
Our chandeliers don’t simply light up ballrooms, but also the promenade in the upper Kettwiger Straße. The glittering light installation enchant visitors with DualColor technology, which creates subtle colour transitions and individual-controlled effects. In future years, it will also be possible to synchronize the lighting designs with music to create a multi-sensory experience that triggers emotional responses The lights invite visitors to stroll through the street, enjoy the festive atmosphere and perhaps partake in a little shopping!
Oh, deer…
For 69 years, the Essen Light Weeks have been filling the city center with festive lighting before, during and after the Christmas season, and that includes the space leading up to the city theater, the Grillo Theater. The theater is one of the oldest in the Ruhr area and has a new exterior façade with simple, straight lines that seemed the perfect place for our 3D deer. Carefully finished in aluminum and filled with lights, these graceful, lifelike light sculptures enchant visitors whilst creating a cosy, welcoming atmosphere in the theater’s forecourt.
Visit Essen
The luminous “Visit Essen” logo in front of the Marktkirche highlights the city’s new tourism strategy. Visitors are encouraged to use the #VisitEssen hashtag to share Essen’s diverse offerings on social media channels. The logo has meaning: the double buck (Doppelbock) as a landmark is intended to symbolize the transformation of coal and steel into the Capital of Culture, and both the double buck and the artificial tree are equipped with dual color chains of lights that create engaging highlights. Visitors are encouraged to take photos and share them with the hashtag to create online buzz and act as a bit of travel inspiration for friends and family online.
Walk Through Christmas Tree, Comet Sky, Roof of Lights, Star Arches, Fountain of Lights, and more!
From November 16th to December 23rd, you can experience the magic of Christmas at Essen’s annual Christmas Market.
This year, visitors can look forward to a completely redesigned Willy Brandt Square with a large walk-through Christmas tree with integrated dual color technology to add extra atmosphere. Visitors can marvel at the so-called “comet sky”, a canopy of lights that hovers high above the Christmas market, and the star arches and the fountain of lights will delight Christmas-lovers of all ages.
Five million visitors can’t be wrong!
The Christmas Market in downtown Essen is one of the most popular Advent markets in Germany, thanks to its atmospheric lighting and glorious stands. From Willy-Brandt-Platz to Kennedyplatz, the market features over 250 festive market stalls, including culinary delights from 20 countries and many regions of Germany. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that the Essen Light Weeks attract around five million visitors every year.
Christmas lighting as visitor magnet
There’s no doubt that Christmas lighting turns visitor attractions into visitor magnets. Read our free report about Christmas Markets at Visitor Magnets to see how important lighting can be: https://www.mk-illumination.com/about/studies-and-research/.
If you think that your city could benefit from an injection of festive lighting to attract and retain visitors, get in touch.
Our team knows all there is to know about how to help you raise your city’s profile with light!
