City guide

Karlsruhe

Karlsruhe is the Facherstadt, the fan city: 32 streets radiate out from the margrave's baroque palace like ribs, a layout striking enough that it reportedly influenced the design of Washington, D.C. It's also Germany's unofficial capital of law (home to both the Federal Constitutional Court and Federal Court of Justice) and a tech hub around KIT, which gives it a calm, well-funded, slightly bureaucratic energy rather than big-city buzz. The tram-train system it pioneered in 1992 quietly lets city trams roll straight onto mainline rail into the surrounding region.