Ratingen is a town in the district of Mettmann, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, in the northwestern part of Berg - about 12 km northeast of Düsseldorf.
Ratingen was settled before 849. Since the Middle Ages, the Ratingen area belonged to the count and later dukes of Berg. On December 11, 1276 the settlement received city rights. Ratingen was one of the four places of Berg which experienced an economic boom in the end of the Middle Ages, but slowed down during the Thirty Years' War. At the beginning of the Industrial Age, the first manufacturing plants opened in 1783.
