Current Time in Karlsruhe, Germany

Karlsruhe lies in the southwest of Germany in the state of Baden Württemberg, on the edge of the Upper Rhine Plain a few kilometres from the river and the French border, with the northern Black Forest rising to the east. The region is the warmest and sunniest in Germany, and the mild climate supports vineyards, orchards and an unusually long growing season, giving the city a relaxed, almost southern atmosphere.

About three hundred and ten thousand people live in Karlsruhe. Its plan is unique among European cities. It was founded in 1715 by Margrave Karl Wilhelm of Baden Durlach, who built a palace in the middle of his hunting forest and had thirty two streets and avenues radiate from its tower like the ribs of a fan. The nickname Fächerstadt, the fan city, follows from this design, and the layout is still perfectly legible from the palace tower today.

Karlsruhe is known throughout Germany as the residence of the law, because it is the seat of both the Federal Constitutional Court and the Federal Court of Justice. Decisions taken here shape German constitutional life, and the courts occupy handsome buildings near the palace grounds.

The city has an extraordinary record of invention. Karl Drais built and rode the first two wheeled steerable running machine, the ancestor of the bicycle, here in 1817. Heinrich Hertz proved the existence of electromagnetic waves in a laboratory of the local polytechnic in the late 1880s, laying the foundation of radio. Fritz Haber worked here on the process that would make industrial fertiliser possible, and in 1984 the first electronic mail message in Germany was received at the university's computer centre. That polytechnic, founded in 1825 as the oldest technical university in the country, is now the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, one of Germany's leading research institutions and a centre for computing, energy and materials science.

Cultural attractions are strong. The Centre for Art and Media, known as the ZKM, occupies a vast former munitions factory and is one of the world's foremost museums of digital and media art. The Staatliche Kunsthalle holds an important collection of German and Dutch painting, the Badisches Landesmuseum fills the palace with archaeology and decorative arts, and the Badisches Staatstheater presents opera, ballet and drama. The palace gardens, the zoo and the Turmberg hill above the old town of Durlach provide green space.

Karlsruhe is famous among transport planners for the Karlsruhe model, a tram train system in which light rail vehicles run on city streets and then continue onto mainline railways deep into the surrounding countryside, an idea copied in many countries. A tunnel beneath the main shopping street opened in 2021 to free the surface from tram traffic.

The city has a large Rhine port and the biggest oil refinery in Germany, and it is well placed for excursions to Strasbourg, Baden Baden, Heidelberg and the Black Forest.

Karlsruhe is important as a centre of law, technology and media art, and it is enjoyed for its baroque plan, its gardens and its exceptionally mild climate.