Papenburg is Germany's oldest and longest fen colony. Canals characterize the cityscape in Papenburg at the upper and lower ends and were the main development axes for a long time. The network of canals extends from the port on the Ems (lower end) to the coastal canal in the southeast (upper end) and has a total length of around 40 km with a longitudinal extension of around 14 km.
The canals were originally built to drain the moor so that the peat could then be mined and used as fuel or made saleable. The canals were soon discovered as efficient transport routes, whereupon dozens of wooden shipyards were built that built barges that were initially towed across the waterways by human hands and later increasingly by horses. In some of the canals, firmly anchored, lie replicas of old ships - from simple boats to large brigs - that remind us of this time.
The streets that mostly run parallel to the canals on both sides are called something like "Erste Wiek links" or "Umländerwiek rechts", with "left" and "right" being seen from the former location of the Papenborg - the origin of the city of Papenburg at the northwest end of the Untenende, today's "old" harbor. The word Wiek means something like "switch" in the sense of turning or branching off. Some former canals, such as the "Osterkanal" or the "Gasthauskanal", can still be recognized by the street names.