Every design for Karlsruhe

Inside the Badisches Landesmuseum, housed in the palace from which the entire city was planned, the story of Baden fills room after room. Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 from what is now the district of Durlach and served for more than two centuries as a capital – of a margraviate, an electorate, a grand duchy and finally the Republic of Baden. Friedrich Weinbrenner's neoclassical buildings still give the early nineteenth-century extension its look.

What sets the city apart is its plan. Thirty-two streets fan out from the palace into the parkland and the Hardtwald, and only the southern segment was built up, which is why Germans call Karlsruhe the Fächerstadt, the fan city. The heritage did not end with the grand dukes: the Federal Court of Justice has sat here since 1950 and the Federal Constitutional Court since 1951, earning the city the name 'residence of law'. The Zentrum für Kunst und Medien carries the story on, and in 2019 UNESCO named Karlsruhe a City of Media Arts.

Return after years away and that fan of streets opens up again, the palace at its hinge: home.