Understand
The city was founded in 1715 by margrave Karl Wilhelm von Baden. The city was laid out on the drawing board. It consists of a central circle, containing the castle, and streets running towards the castle as radial "spokes". This pattern is still visible today. Due to the fan-like layout, Karlsruhe is known as the "fan city" Fächerstadt.
The Rhine valley, where Karlsruhe is located, is the warmest part of Germany because it is only about 115 m above sea level and there are mountains in the east black forest and west vogesen. Therefore, Karlsruhe has more sunny days than many other parts of Germany.
There isn't a lot of tourist traffic to Karlsruhe. Tourists generally tend to gravitate towards the cities of Heidelberg 50km to the north and Freiburg 100km to the south, with their well-preserved old towns. It's a shame though, as Karlsruhe's radial layout is one of the best early examples of New Urbanism, and is really a joy to explore. Maybe that's a benefit to travelers who do venture there, as the number of visitors is low enough to be sort of a novelty for the locals.
Karlsruhe is home to the two highest federal courts of Germany, the Bundesverfassungsgericht Federal constitutional court and the Bundesgerichtshof Supreme federal court. Because of this and other administrative facilities, Karlsruhe has a reputation as a city of civil servants.
Karlsruhe has a large technical university, as well as several other colleges. The presence of the technical university has promoted the city somewhat in the world of Free and Open Source Software: Karlsruhe was the home of LinuxTag (http://linuxtag.org) until 2005.
