Between tracks and ideas
The Garage Campus is a cultural, project, and event venue that offers space for you and your ideas. Here, you can not only rent rooms for your next company party or conference, but also organize creative workshops, festivals, exhibitions, or something completely new. If you prefer to be a visitor, you can be inspired by these offerings and events, learn new things, and meet people.
The path to the present
Making hidden places visible, creating space for creativity, promoting creators, and strengthening European identity—this is the guiding principle behind “C the Unseen—European Makers of Democracy,” the programmatic focus of the European Capital of Culture 2025.
In the heart of Chemnitz-Kappel, this has already given rise to a vibrant place: the Garage Campus. On the site of the former CVAG tram depot, historic industrial architecture meets new ideas, art, and culture.
The Garage Campus was part of the Capital of Culture’s intervention areas and sees itself as an open space for cultural creation, exchange, and joint development. Here, projects can grow, networks can form, and new perspectives on the city and Europe can become visible.
A place for doers, creatives, neighbors – and for anyone who wants to actively shape Chemnitz.
VIDEO: THE GARAGE-CAMPUS EXPLAINED
In this video, Katharina von Storch, Tina Winkel, and Stefan Tschök from the Garage-Campus team take you on a journey through the past, present, and future of the site.
Learn more about the eventful history of the former tram depot – and how a new place for culture, creativity, and community is being created here.
The History
The Kappel depot is the oldest location of Chemnitz’s local transport system – and a piece of the city’s history. On April 22, 1880, the first horse-drawn tram line departed from the depot, which at that time consisted of a simple wooden carriage shed, four tracks, and a coachman’s room.
With the introduction of electric rail operations in 1893, the expansion of the site began: new carriage sheds were built, including a large hall with space for 64 trams (1908), supplemented by an administration building and several communal buildings. The depot became the logistical heart of the city’s local transport system.
After the Second World War, the site was initially repaired and modernized. In the 1980s, the introduction of the new Variobahnen trams heralded the end of low-floor trams. The Kappel site was gradually abandoned with the completion of the new company headquarters in Adelsberg.
Some areas were leased or dismantled, while others remained unused. But part of the history lives on: in 1987, the Tram Enthusiasts’ Association was founded to preserve vehicles and memories in the local tram museum.
With the Garage Campus, a new place is being created on this historic site – open to the future, rooted in the past.