With its glorious natural setting, the harmonious ensemble consisting of castle, old town and river set in the midst of hills, Heidelberg is regarded as one of the most beautiful cities in Germany. Year after year millions of tourists are drawn to experience Heidelberg's mystique. Heidelberg was included in the preliminary German list for registration as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The city of the oldest university in Germany (established in 1386) looks back on over 800 years of history. The modern Heidelberg attracts people with its forward-looking science and research activities, is a quickly growing business location and the lively centre of the Rhine Neckar Triangle. Open-mindedness and internationality characterize the city on the Neckar that has cultivated town twinning relationships all over the world.
14 city districts covering an area of 109 square kilometres with a total of some 140,000 inhabitants presently make up Heidelberg. City development in Heidelberg is governed by the "Heidelberg City Development Plan 2010" which was adopted by the Heidelberg City Council in spring 1997 and defines the main targets of the city policy on its way into the 21st century in a "Local Agenda 21". This was one of the main reasons that Heidelberg was chosen as a pilot city in the research project "Cities of the Future" by which the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing wished to test future strategies for sustainable city development within the framework of the "Experimental Housing and Urban Development" (Experimenteller Wohnungs- und St�dtebau - ExWoSt).

First mentioned as a city in the 12th century and having been the residence of the counts of the Palatinate over many centuries, the layout of Heidelberg's streets still follow the same plan as in the middle ages, whereas the cityscape is now characterized by the baroque reconstruction carried out after the destructions of 1689 and 1693.
The oldest German university founded in 1386 - the third German-speaking one after Prague and Vienna - had acquired great scientific importance as early as in the 15th and 16th century and came to another bloom after having been re-established in 1801.
The castle dating from the early 13th century is one of the main works of German renaissance architecture, and particularly so the elements built in the 16th and early 17th century. The ruins of the castle destroyed in the 17th century dominate the world-famous townscape. The Europe-wide discussion about reconstruction held around 1900 resulted in the modern preservation of monuments and historic buildings ("preservation - not restoration").
In the 19th century, Heidelberg was the centre of German Romanticism. Town, university, castle and the surrounding landscape make up this unmistakable, romantic ensemble to which Heidelberg owes its fame.

" ...Fridrich (Frederick) the Winter Kingďż˝s (1596-1632) base was Heidelberg, a town considered to be a crossroad for rosicrucians. Dee, Bruno, Komensky, Andrae, Rozmberk, Maier, Croll, Brahe, Descartes and others met there, as well as at Rudolph II´s residence in Prague. Heidelberg was great, but too small for the rosecrucianďż˝s ideal, and a more important city needed to be chosen. Above all, the daring dream had to be connected with a strong and spiritually enlightened ruler, which Frederock V seemed to be. His arrival in Prague, as well as his later coronation , was seen as a victory. But he didnďż˝t have long to rule , a year later two armies met at the Battle of the White Mountain, on the one side the Protestant forces of the Czech and Moravian nobility, on the other, he emperorďż˝ hired army. The battle lasted lees than two hours, but the repercussions would reverberate for centuries, the Hapsburg domination of the Czech lands ended only in 1918, after World War I. The ambitions of Fridrich the Winter King were supported by his wife, the English princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I...."
Text - Jiri Kuchar - "Praha esotericka"

It is 5,5 hours to drive.
It is a 14 hour round trip.


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