Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
50
T-O12
A4
Shopping
B5
B4
53
Flea Market
C4
(see 9)
B3
(see 54)
55
Tausche
B5
History
Whether with trusty steeds or turbocharged engines, Stuttgart was born to ride, founded as
the stud farm Stuotgarten around 950 AD. Progress was swift: by the 12th century Stut-
tgart was a trade centre, by the 13th century a blossoming city and by the early 14th cen-
tury the seat of the Württemberg royal family. Count Eberhard im Bart added sheen to
Swabian suburbia by introducing the
Kehrwoche
in 1492, the communal cleaning rota still
revered today.
The early 16th century brought hardship, peasant wars, plague and Austrian rulers
(1520-34). A century later, the Thirty Years' War devastated Stuttgart and killed half its
population.
In 1818, King Wilhelm I launched the first the Cannstatter Volksfest to celebrate the
end of a dreadful famine. An age of industrialisation dawned in the late 19th and early
20th centuries, with Bosch inventing the spark plug and Daimler pioneering the gas en-
gine. Heavily bombed in WWII, Stuttgart was painstakingly reconstructed and became the
capital of the new state of Baden-Württemberg in 1953. Today it is one of Germany's
greenest and most affluent cities.
Sights
Stuttgart's main artery is the shopping boulevard Königstrasse, running south from the
Hauptbahnhof. Steep grades are common on Stuttgart's hillsides: more than 500 city
streets end in
Stäffele
(staircases).
