Every design for Villingen-Schwenningen

Two great rivers begin within the limits of Villingen-Schwenningen: the Neckar rises in the Schwenninger Moos, while the Brigach, one of the two headstreams of the Danube, runs through Villingen. The city itself is a union of two very different towns. Villingen, once part of Baden, was briefly a Free Imperial City in the Middle Ages, later lived under Austrian lordship and stayed Catholic through the Reformation; in 1704 its outdated walls held out against a French siege. Schwenningen, on the Württemberg side, remained a village until its first watch factory opened in 1858, and watchmaking and precision mechanics have shaped it ever since.

The city lies on the eastern edge of the Black Forest, about 700 metres above sea level, where the forest gives way to the high basin of the Baar. The two centres are about eight kilometres apart, separated by a plateau, and the European watershed runs between them. Since 1972 they have shared one name. In Villingen the old Bickentor still marks the way into the historic centre, and with its Narros the town is one of the great centres of German carnival.

Anyone who grew up here knows which half they come from, and the map shows both, joined across the plateau.