Freiburg im Breisgau

Freiburg was founded in 1120 by Konrad and Duke Berthold III of the House of Zähringen as a free market town, and its name means a free, or independent, town. It sat at a junction of trade routes between the Mediterranean and the North Sea, and silver from the mines of the Schauinsland made it one of the richest cities in Europe; it minted its own coin, the Rappenpfennig, from 1327. Work on the minster began around 1200. After a long feud with their counts — the townspeople wrecked the count's castle on the Schlossberg — the citizens bought their independence in 1368 and placed the town under Habsburg protection.

In 1457 the Habsburg regent Albrecht VI founded the university, and in 1520 Freiburg chose to stay Catholic, becoming a centre of Catholicism on the Upper Rhine; Erasmus moved here when Basel turned Protestant. The town suffered witch-hunts that peaked in 1599, and the Thirty Years' War cut its population from more than 10,000 to about 2,000. Between 1648 and 1805, when not under French occupation, it was the administrative seat of Further Austria. It passed to Baden in 1805 and became the seat of a Catholic archbishop in the 1820s.

Under the Nazis the synagogue was burned in 1938 and the city's Jews were deported in 1940 and 1942. On 27 November 1944 an RAF raid destroyed much of the centre, though the minster was only lightly damaged; the city was rebuilt on its medieval plan. After 1945 it lay in the French zone and was the seat of government of the state of Baden until the 1952 merger, and French troops stayed until 1991. Their former base became the Vauban district, a symbol of the city's green reputation.

The minster, the university and the Black Forest shape the city's identity. The university, one of Germany's oldest, has counted Max Weber, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Hayek among its members, and gives the city a young population and a lively student life around squares such as the Augustinerplatz. The Freiburger Barockorchester was co-founded here, and the Zelt-Musik-Festival has filled tents with music, theatre and cabaret every summer since 1983.

Freiburg remained Catholic when much of the surrounding countryside became Protestant, and the archbishop's see and the German headquarters of Caritas are here. The Fasnet before Lent, a mix of Swabian-Alemannic and Rhineland carnival traditions, is the big street festival of the year, followed by summer wine festivals and the Christmas market. The local dialect is Low Alemannic, close to Alsatian and Basel German, and people born in the city are nicknamed Bobbele.

Since the 1990s Freiburg has been known as an eco-city. It required low-energy construction on municipal land from 1995, built the Vauban and Rieselfeld districts on sustainable principles, and in 2010 was named European City of the Year by the Academy of Urbanism. The Greens have been the largest party on the city council since 2004. The stolpersteine set into the cobbles outside former homes remember Jewish victims of the Nazi era.

About 238,000 people lived in the city at the end of 2025, and the wider metropolitan area has about 660,000. Tens of thousands of them are students at the university and the city's other colleges, and the city has grown quickly in recent decades; housing is scarce and expensive.

The economy rests on the university and its medical centre, research institutes, the church and public administration, tourism as a gateway to the Black Forest, and solar industry and research; a branch of the Federal Office for Radiation Protection is here, as are international bodies such as ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and the International Solar Energy Society. The Messe Freiburg hosts trade fairs and concerts.

Daily movement is by tram and bicycle more than by car: most residents live close to a tram stop, the centre is a pedestrian zone, and car journeys are projected to make up under a third of trips. Saturday mornings bring crowds to the Münsterplatz market, summer evenings fill the squares and the Wiehre's woods with students, and at weekends many residents head up into the hills. SC Freiburg's home matches are a fixture of city life.

Freiburg eats in the Baden style, with an eye on France. The Münsterplatz market sells local fruit, vegetables and flowers from the surrounding countryside every day except Sunday, and a grilled Bratwurst in a bread roll from one of the stands around the minster is the classic snack. Flammkuchen, a speciality shared with Alsace and Baden, is bread dough rolled very thin and covered with fromage blanc or crème fraîche, sliced onions and lardons, and baked in a wood-fired oven.

From the Black Forest come Schwarzwälder Schinken, a dry-cured smoked ham whose name has had protected status in the European Union since 1997, and the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, a layer cake of cocoa, cherries, Kirsch and whipped cream decorated with dark chocolate, found in the city's cafés. The Markthalle in the old town gathers food counters under one roof.

The city lies in Baden, Germany's third-largest wine region, where cooperatives make most of the wine. The volcanic Kaiserstuhl to the west is one of the warmest wine areas in the country, and the Freiburger Weinfest each July and a smaller wine tasting in the courtyard of the Historical Merchants' Hall in August pour the local wines. The Feierling brewery's beer garden on the Augustinerplatz is the place for local beer.