10 Facts You Didn’t Know About Stuttgart

Stuttgart Fernsehturm. Photo: DPA

Stuttgart is the capital city of Baden-Württemberg and the sixth biggest city in Germany. The Local has compiled a list of 10 facts that you might not know about Stuttgart, even if you live there!

1. The city’s Fernsehturm was the first of its kind in history

Stuttgart’s Fernsehturm, meaning television tower, was the first concrete television tower in the world. Renowned structural engineer and bridge builder Professor Fritz Leonhardt was the mastermind behind the building.

Rather than simply creating a functional metal TV mast, he had the idea to use the tower as a tourist attraction with a restaurant and viewing platform. The tower is 217m tall but stands on a hill making it 283m above sea level in total. It is visible from all over the city and has influenced the design of other television towers around the world.

2. Stuttgart is the home of the petrol-powered car

Stuttgart is credited as the birthplace of the petrol powered motorcar with an impressive history in the field of car manufacturing. Pioneering engineers Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz were both born near Stuttgart and their 125-year legacy is celebrated at the Mercedes-Benz Welt museum in the east of the city.

3. The city gets its name from its horse breeding past

The area around which the city developed was originally a site for breeding cavalry horses, owned by Duke Liudolf von Schwaben in the 10th century. The name comes from ‘Stutengarten’ which is an archaic form of the German word ‘Gestüt’, meaning stud yard.

The city coat of arms is consequently a black stallion which is recognizable to people around the world as it is featured on the Porsche logo, a make of cars which also originates from the Stuttgart area.

4. Stuttgart is a city of stairs

The capital of Baden-Württemberg is built upon a large number of hills, but with this comes the potentially more enjoyable side effect of a large number of vineyards.

To help people get up and down these hills each day, Stuttgart has over 400 sets of outdoor stairs in total. If you climbed them all, you would climb about 20 kilometres in total.

How many facts did you already know? Read the rest of the list on The Local.