लुडविग्सबर्ग Audio Tours

Ludwigsburg exists because a duke wanted a palace. In 1704, Eberhard Ludwig of Württemberg broke ground on what would become the largest baroque castle complex in Germany, and a town grew up around it the way towns do around spectacles of power. By 1718 it had a charter; by 1733 it had 6,000 residents and three interconnected palaces. The result is a city shaped like an idea, its streets laid out to serve the Schloss rather than the other way around.

Walk the grid of the old town and you feel that original geometry.

Monrepos Palace sits serenely at its lake, Schloss Favorite guards the hunting grounds to the north, and the main palace dominates the center with over 450 rooms and two baroque churches within its grounds. The Film Academy Baden-Württemberg, founded here in 1991, now makes Ludwigsburg one of Germany's more unexpected creative centers. Hans and Sophie Scholl grew up on these streets before becoming the conscience of a generation. Stolpersteine in the pavement remember what was destroyed in November 1938.