Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of Baden-Württemberg in southwestern Germany, in a basin beside the Neckar River with vineyards on its slopes. A stud farm founded by Duke Liudolf of Swabia in the 10th century gave the city its name, and the black horse of its coat of arms also appears in the Porsche badge.

The counts of Württemberg made Stuttgart their residence in the 14th century, and it became the capital of the Kingdom of Württemberg in 1806. The New Palace on the Schlossplatz was built for the dukes in the 18th century. The philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart, and the poet Friedrich Schiller studied at the Karlsschule, the academy of the duke. Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built a light, fast-running petrol engine in a garden shed in Cannstatt, now part of the city, in the 1880s.

Mercedes-Benz keeps its head office and its main engine plant in Untertürkheim, and Porsche builds its sports cars in Zuffenhausen, both districts of Stuttgart. Bosch began as Robert Bosch's workshop for precision mechanics in the city and grew into a maker of car parts, power tools and household appliances. The Mercedes-Benz Museum, a double helix of ramps, shows the company's cars from the earliest motor carriage onward.

The Weissenhof Estate, a housing exhibition of the late 1920s, has houses by Le Corbusier that are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Stuttgart Ballet won international fame under John Cranko in the 1960s, and his full-length ballets Onegin and Romeo and Juliet are still in its repertoire. The Cannstatter Volksfest, held each autumn on the Wasen beside the Neckar, opens with a parade and fills large beer tents, around a fruit column of carved wood topped with apples and pears.