Karlsruhe Audio Tours

Margrave Charles III William fell out with the citizens of Durlach in 1715 and decided to build a new capital from nothing. He placed his palace at the centre and drew thirty-two streets radiating outward like spokes on a wheel. The resulting plan was so striking that Thomas Jefferson sketched it and shared the drawings with Pierre L'Enfant during the design of Washington D.C. That the 'fan city' inspired the American capital is a fact Karlsruhe mentions with satisfying regularity.

In 1825, the city marked the founder's grave in the central market square with a pyramid.

It is still there, a sandstone pyramid rising out of the pedestrian zone, which is either eccentric or entirely logical depending on how you feel about neoclassical urban planning. The city's greatest architect, Friedrich Weinbrenner, gave St Stephan's Church a Pantheon-sized dome in 1814. Karl Benz was born in nearby Muhlburg, part of the city now, and built his first automobile here in 1885. Karl Drais invented the bicycle here in 1817. Heinrich Hertz discovered electromagnetic waves in the city's polytechnic.