“City Embraced by Rhine River”
Düsseldorf (, German: [ˈdʏsl̩dɔɐ̯f] ( listen); Low Franconian and Ripuarian: Düsseldörp [ˈdʏsl̩dœɐ̯p]), often Dusseldorf in English sources, is the capital and, after Cologne, second most populous city of the most populous German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, as well as the seventh most populous city in Germany. At the confluence of the Rhine and its tributary Düssel, the city lies in the centre of both the Rhine-Ruhr and the Rhineland Metropolitan Regions with the Cologne/Bonn urban area to its south and the Ruhr to its north. The city is the largest in the German Low Franconian (closely related to Dutch) dialect area. Most of the city lies on the right bank of the Rhine (as opposed to Cologne, whose city centre lies on the river's left bank). "Dorf" meaning "village", Düsseldorf is the largest settlement with that suffix in the German-speaking area.
Mercer's 2012 Quality of Living survey ranked Düsseldorf the sixth most livable city in the world. Düsseldorf Airport is Germany's third-busiest airport after those of Frankfurt and Munich, serving as the most important international airport for the inhabitants of the densely populated Ruhr, Germany's largest urban area. Düsseldorf is an international business and financial centre, renowned for its fashion and trade fairs, and is headquarters to one Fortune Global 500 and two DAX companies. Messe Düsseldorf organises nearly one fifth of premier trade shows. As second largest city of the Rhineland, Düsseldorf holds Rhenish Carnival celebrations every year in February/March, the Düsseldorf carnival celebrations being the third most popular in Germany after those held in Cologne and Mainz.There are 22 institutions of higher education in the city including the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, the university of applied sciences (Hochschule Düsseldorf), the academy of arts (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf) (Joseph Beuys, Emanuel Leutze, August Macke, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Andreas Gursky), and the unive