Among its neighbours Mainz, Darmstadt and Heidelberg Ludwigshafen is the town with the shortest past, since contrary to its time-honoured sisters it was founded as late as 1853. Still Ludwigshafen today is the second-biggest city in the Federal State of Rhineland-Palatinate, though it started only 150 years ago as a small entrenchment in the defensive system of Mannheim, the town on the other side of the Rhine River. Today Ludwigshafen is the administrative and economic centre of the district Rheinpfalz.

Notwithstanding its short history Ludwigshafen does actually own some outstanding monuments of architecture as for instance the Pilgrim´s Church Mariae Himmelfahrt (1774) in Oggersheim, a former independent town which now is a quarter of Ludwigshafen, or the protestant Luther Church, which was finished in 1880. The central train station Ludwigshafen, opened in 1969, in its time was considered one of the most modern all over Europe because its rails working on four different levels. Visitors preferring to go shopping will find all they might be looking for in a most modern shopping mall called Rhein-Galerie and opened in 2010.

If you prefer cultural experiences, you should visit the Ernst-Bloch-Zentrum, the City Museum Ludwigshafen, or the Schillerhaus, a museum with a collection of first prints of the works of the German poet Friedrich Schiller.

More information (in German): http://www.ludwigshafen.de/

Photo: BASF, Thorsten Frisch/Shutterstock