Baden-Württemberg, Germany — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Baden-Württemberg known for?

The Black Forest is the signature: Germany's largest continuous woodland, dark with fir and cut by deep valleys, and the source of both the Neckar and the Danube. Stuttgart, the capital, sits in a bowl of vineyards on the Neckar and builds the cars that carry the region's name abroad, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche among them. In the south the land drops to Lake Constance, the broad water Baden-Württemberg shares with Switzerland and Austria.

Wine, forest, and precision engineering define it.

Where is Baden-Württemberg?

Baden-Württemberg is Germany's south-western state, wedged against France and Switzerland. The Rhine draws much of that frontier, running north along the western edge before bending away, with France on the far bank. Behind the river the Black Forest climbs steeply, a long forested range that shelters the Rhine plain from the west and holds the state's high ground.

Its summit is the Feldberg. No point in Germany outside the Alps and Bavaria stands higher. East of the forest the land is gentler.

The Neckar rises in the Black Forest, loops north through Stuttgart, Tübingen, and Heidelberg, and empties into the Rhine at the state's north-western shoulder. Between the Neckar and the Danube stretches the Swabian Jura, a limestone plateau that forms a watershed of Europe. The Danube is born here.

It gathers near Donaueschingen before turning east to cross the continent, and in the far south the ground falls away to Lake Constance, the broad Alpine lake the state shares with Switzerland and Austria. Bavaria lies east. The rest of Germany runs off to the north.

What is Baden-Württemberg like?

The state carries two old identities under one hyphenated name. Baden, along the Rhine, speaks an Alemannic tongue close to Swiss German and Alsatian; Swabian, spoken around Stuttgart and the Neckar, is the sound the wider world tends to associate with the region. The people have a reputation for thrift and diligence, and a proverb about their industry that they repeat with some pride.

That same instinct built the car. Engineering is the through-line. Mercedes-Benz and Porsche both grew up around Stuttgart, and the region spends more on research than any other German state.

Yet the culture is not only workshops and test tracks. Vineyards climb the Neckar and the Rems, planted with Trollinger and Riesling, and the wine is drunk locally more than it is exported. Learning runs deep as well: Heidelberg opened Germany's oldest university in 1386, and Tübingen has been a town of students and printers for centuries.

Half-timbered old towns, forest festivals, and cuckoo clocks belong to the picture as much as the assembly line. Work and pleasure sit side by side here.

What is the history of Baden-Württemberg?

The state is younger than its parts. For centuries this ground was split between the Grand Duchy of Baden along the Rhine and the Kingdom of Württemberg around Stuttgart, with the small Hohenzollern lands between them. After the Second World War the Allies redrew the map into occupation zones, and in a referendum held in 1951 the three successor territories voted on whether to merge or stand apart.

Baden was reluctant, but the combined vote carried it. Baden-Württemberg was created on 25 April 1952, joining South Baden, Württemberg-Baden, and Württemberg-Hohenzollern into a single state with Stuttgart as its capital.

What is the climate of Baden-Württemberg?

The south-west is Germany's warmest corner. Sheltered between the Black Forest and the hills across the Rhine, the Upper Rhine valley traps heat and sun, and the Baden vineyards ripen where little else in the country can. Winters there stay mild enough for orchards, and the Kaiserstuhl hills near the river are the warmest ground in Germany.

Higher up the story flips. The Black Forest and the Feldberg catch far more rain and snow, cold enough to keep ski lifts running through the winter.

How do you get to Baden-Württemberg?

Stuttgart runs the state's largest airport, and the S-Bahn drops flyers into the capital in under half an hour. Fast trains help too. Baden-Württemberg sits on the main rail spine between Frankfurt and Switzerland, so Karlsruhe, Mannheim, and Stuttgart are all quick hops from the wider German network.

The Rhine motorway and the French border put Strasbourg within easy reach of the western towns. For the Black Forest and Lake Constance, a car opens up the valleys and the lakeshore that trains only skirt.