Germany · Baden-Württemberg · Karlsruhe
Nordstadt, Karlsruhe — Area Guide & Where to Stay
The Nordstadt is the newest district of Karlsruhe, Germany, formed in 1996 out of the barracks and housing the United States Army left behind.
Hotel links are affiliate links: booking through them may earn us a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never affects how places are ranked. How this works
Where to stay in Nordstadt
The practical side of choosing where to sleep.
The Nordstadt divides into the Hardtwaldsiedlung and the Amerikanersiedlung, and the second name is literal. Its middle is the Paul Revere Village, apartment blocks built from 1951 for American families and since modernised with extra storeys added, set among strips of woodland with playgrounds. Most of those streets still carry the names of American states.
The district is narrow and long, running up against the Hardtwald on its eastern side.
About Nordstadt
What are the main landmarks in Nordstadt?
Smiley Barracks stands at the northern end, built in 1937 as the Forstner-Kaserne and now used by a tenants' initiative and several public bodies, with the Smiley West estate beside it that locals call Legoland. Karlsruhe's synagogue was built here in 1971. South of the Hardtwaldsiedlung sits the Herz-Jesu-Church, which began in 1924 as a temporary structure and was never replaced.
What is the history of Nordstadt?
The Hardtwaldsiedlung is the older half, a housing cooperative founded in the 1920s that belonged to the Weststadt. Everything else is American. The Forstner-Kaserne of 1937 became the Smiley Barracks under the United States Army, the Paul Revere Village went up beside it in 1951, and when the American forces left Karlsruhe in 1995 the city built new apartments and raised the old ones, constituting the Nordstadt as a district in its own right on the first day of 1996.
Where is Nordstadt?
The Nordstadt is narrow and elongated, running north through Karlsruhe with the Hardtwald closing its eastern flank. Neureut lies beyond the northern end. The schools mark the middle of it: the Marylandschule occupies what was the Karlsruhe American Elementary School, and the Heisenberg-Gymnasium the former American high school, while the Duale Hochschule moved to ground near the old airfield in 1995.
More areas in Karlsruhe
Updated September 2026