Every design for Darmstadt

Have you ever had to explain that, yes, a chemical element is named after your home town? Darmstadtium was discovered at the GSI Centre for Heavy Ion Research here, along with roentgenium and copernicium, and that is only the start of how science runs through daily life in the official City of Science. ESA's European Space Operations Centre and EUMETSAT both have their home here, as does Merck, the world's oldest pharmaceutical company and the city's largest employer.

Yet what gives Darmstadt its look is art rather than physics. The artists' colony on the Mathildenhöhe, a major centre of the Jugendstil movement, became a World Heritage Site in 2021 together with the Russian Chapel. As capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse the city gained the Darmstädter Residenzschloss, the Herrngarten and the Orangerie, and two Russian empresses were born here. And SV Darmstadt 98 is part of the furniture too.

Picture a walk from the Herrngarten past the Darmstädter Residenzschloss, with the Hochzeitsturm somewhere on the skyline and the Ludwigsmonument marking the centre.