Every design for Friedrichshafen

Friedrichshafen curves around a gentle bay on the northern shore of Lake Constance, the Bodensee, close to the borders of both Switzerland and Austria. The Rotach slips into the lake at the eastern edge of the town centre, and the larger Schussen reaches it a few kilometres further east.

Its position on the water made the town. Friedrichshafen was created in 1811 from the old town of Buchhorn and the village of Hofen, named after King Frederick I of Württemberg and made a free port for the kingdom's trade with Switzerland. A ferry to Romanshorn followed in 1869, and the monastery at Hofen became the kings' summer residence, today's Schloss Friedrichshafen with its Schlosskirche. Now the district town of the Bodenseekreis, it is the second-largest town on the lake after Konstanz, with the Stadtgarten as its green heart.

Then came Ferdinand von Zeppelin. His first airship, the LZ1, rose from its mooring here on 2 July 1900, and the Zeppelin Museum keeps that story alive. A map of Friedrichshafen carries it all: the bay, the castle church and the place where airship history began.