Little known grids: Ludwigsburg

The beginning of the town of Ludwigsburg in Baden-Württemberg is the acquisition of the hunting lodge Erlachhof by Duke Eberhard Ludwig von Württemberg in 1704. In the same year the first stone was laid for a large new lodge the duke "modestly" named after himself and a long axis was carved from the Salonwald: the Königsallee (King's Avenue). Previously only small scale monastic landholdings where to be found here edging vast forests.  In the early sixteen hundreds a small lodge was built on the edge of the arable land belonging to the monastery. This building had been destroyed by French troops in 1693.

From 1709 onwards a new town was developed on the basis of the spacious grid of hunting avenues. The town is named after the neigbouring hunting lodge which is to be extended into a residential palace (Residenzschloß). Ludwigsburg is clearly a planned urban foundation with a regular grid plan. The central axis is formed by the Königsallee from which the grid is developed. Older roads and cultivated fields show in the city plan as curved lines.

The oldest part of Ludwigsburg is situated directly west of the palace grounds around the market place. Between 1727 and 1730 court nobles and civil servants built both large and small houses in this new town that is eventually walled-in and fitted witch city gates. Besides houses there were  churches, military barracks, stables, inns, warehouses, administrative offices and government buildings built. Thus Ludwigsburg becomes the new ducal residence instead of Stuttgart. The new city was over time connected witch hunting grounds close by and further afield by long avenues in a magnificent late baroque gesture.

 

The regular grid plan of Ludwigsburg was developed from a forest.The oldest part of the town is to be found around the Marktplatz (1). The first extension of the town is situated directly south around the Rathausplatz (2).The former monasterial landholdings (3) are situated north of the old town.The basis of the layout is a long axis that starts at the Salonwald (A) and now ends at Favorite (G). The Königsallee (B) connected the Salonwald with the hunting lodge and later palace. The long alley crosses the Bärenwiese (C) and ends at the gates of the South Parterre (D). The axis runs through the middle of the imposing residential palace (E) and the North Parterre (F). The strict grid of Ludwigsburg incorporates older cultivated land north of the town center and a few older routes that once crossed the forest (in yellow).