🇩🇪 Mannheim is the second-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, and Germany's 21st-largest city. Mannheim also forms part of the wider Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region. The Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region, often referred to as the Rhein-Neckar-Triangle is a polycentric metropolitan region located in south western Germany, between the Frankfurt/Rhine-Main region to the North and the Stuttgart Region to the South-East. The metropolitan region includes the major cities of Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg. Other cities within the area include the former Free imperial cities of Speyer and Worms.
Mannheim is unusual among German cities in that its streets and avenues are laid out in a grid pattern, leading to its nickname Quadratestadt (Square City). Within a ring of avenues surrounding the city centre, there are squares numbered from A1 to U6 instead of street names. At the southern base of that system sits Mannheim Palace, one of the largest palace complexes in the world, and the second-largest in Baroque style after Versailles. It was the former home of the Prince-elector of the Electoral Palatinate, and now houses the University of Mannheim. The civic symbol of Mannheim is the Romanesque Mannheim Water Tower, completed in 1886 and rising to 60 metres (200 feet) above the highest point of the art nouveau area Friedrichsplatz. Mannheim is the starting and finishing point of the Bertha Benz Memorial Route.
The city is home to major corporations including Daimler, John Deere, Caterpillar, ABB, Fuchs Petrolub, IBM, Roche, Reckitt Benckiser, Unilever, Phoenix Group, Pepperl+Fuchs, Siemens, and several other well-known companies. Mannheim's SAP Arena is home to German ice hockey record champions Adler Mannheim as well as well-known handball team Rhein-Neckar Löwen. Since 2014, Mannheim has been a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and holds the title of "UNESCO City of Music". Mannheim is a smart city; the city's electrical grid is installed with a power-line communication network. The city's tourism slogan is "Leben. Im Quadrat" ("Life. In the Square")
1Economy With a gross domestic product (GDP) of €20.921 billion, Mannheim ranks 17th on the list of German cities by GDP.
Mannheim is among the most attractive business locations in Germany thanks to its competitive business environment and growth opportunities and is considered the economic centre of the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region, which is one of Germany's most important business locations.
The New Economy Magazine elected Mannheim under the 20 cities that best represent the world of tomorrow emphasising Mannheim's positive economic and innovative environment.
The successor to the Karl Benz automobile manufacturing companies begun in Mannheim, Daimler AG, has had a large presence in Mannheim. Today, diesel engines and buses are assembled there. The Swiss Hoffmann–La Roche Diagnostic group (formerly known as Boehringer Mannheim) has its division headquarters in Mannheim. Additionally, the city also hosts large factories and offices of ABB, Alstom, BASF (Ludwigshafen), Bilfinger Berger, Bombardier, Fuchs Petrolub AG, John Deere, Siemens, SCA, Südzucker, and other companies. University Hospital Mannheim provides health care to the inhabitants of Mannheim and the metropolitan region Rhine-Neckar.
With €4.5 billion, Mannheim ranks 22nd on the list of cities by market value of its DAX, TecDAX and MDAX companies.
MVV Energie based in Mannheim is the largest municipal energy supplier in Germany.
1Media In addition to the only local daily newspaper Mannheimer Morgen the Ludwigshafen newspaper Die Rheinpfalz, the Heidelberg newspaper Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung and the Bild Rhein-Neckar offer a local section for Mannheim. In addition, the weekly paper Wochenblatt Mannheim with its official gazette is published. The Kommunal-Info Mannheim is published fortnightly. Free district newspapers are distributed in almost all parts of the city.
1Transport: Road The Mannheim/Ludwigshafen area is surrounded by a ring of motorways connecting it to Frankfurt in the north, Karlsruhe in the south, Saarbrücken in the west and Nuremberg in the east.
1Transport: Rail Mannheim Hauptbahnhof (central station) is at the end of the Mannheim-Stuttgart high-speed rail line and is the most important railway junction in the south-west of Germany, served by ICE high-speed train system with connections to Frankfurt am Main–Berlin, Karlsruhe–Basel, and Stuttgart–Munich. A new high speed line to Frankfurt also is planned to relieve the existing Mannheim–Frankfurt railway.
1River transport Mannheim Harbour is the second-largest river port in Germany and has a size of 1131 hectares. In 2016, 6.9 million tons of goods were handled on the water side. Around 500 companies, with about 20,000 employees, are in the Mannheim Harbour.
1Transport: Air Although Frankfurt International Airport is only 65 km (40 mi) to the north, at various times over the years there were daily passenger flights from Mannheim City Airport (IATA code MHG) to London, Dresden, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Saarbrücken. Currently, commercial passenger flights serve Sylt.
1Local public transport Local public transport in Mannheim includes the RheinNeckar S-Bahn, eleven tram lines, and numerous bus lines operated by Rhein-Neckar-Verkehr (Rhine-Neckar transport) (RNV).
The RheinNeckar S-Bahn, established in 2003, connects most of the Rhine-Neckar area, including lines into the Palatinate, Odenwald and southern Hesse. All S-Bahn lines run through Mannheim Hauptbahnhof except S5. Other S-Bahn stations are Mannheim-Rangierbahnhof, Mannheim-Seckenheim, and Mannheim-Friedrichsfeld-Süd.
The 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) metre gauge integrated Mannheim/Ludwigshafen tramway network also extends to Heidelberg. It is operated by RNV, a company that is wholly owned by the three cities mentioned and a couple of municipalities in the Palatinate. RNV is the result of a merger on 1 October 2009 between the region's five former municipal transportation companies. Interurban trams are operated by RNV on a triangular route between Mannheim, Heidelberg, and Weinheim that was originally established by the Upper Rhine Railway Company (Oberrheinische Eisenbahn, OEG), and the company also operates interurban trams between Bad Dürkheim, Ludwigshafen, and Mannheim. In the 1970s a proposal to build a U-Bahn out of the Mannheim and Ludwigshafen tramways was begun, but only small sections were built due to lack of funds. The only underground station in Mannheim is the Haltestelle Dalbergstraße. U-Bahn planning now has stopped. All public transport is offered at uniform prices set by the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar (Rhine-Neckar Transport Union, VRN).
1Block numbering and computer mapping The city centre uses an addressing system that is unique within Germany. Rather than street names and numbers, each block is given a code and a number is given to each building: C3, 17 is block C3, building 17. The practice dates back centuries and is a result of the original use of the city centre as a fort, with the fort's internal system being adopted when it became public streets. The streets themselves are unnamed. The codes are laid out in a simple progressive pattern: C3 is between C2 and C4 in one direction and B3 and D3 in the other. However, those unused to the system will often become lost. A street named Breite Straße goes through the middle of the blocks from south to north, with blocks A-K on the west side of the street and L-U on the east, with each row going 1 to at most 7 based on distance from this road. House numbers begin on the south corner nearest Breite Straße and go counterclockwise for A-K and clockwise for L-U.
That causes major issues with most mapping software, as the databases that they use are based on the standard street-number system, and so the software cannot accommodate a completely different system for a small area. A variety of fixes have been tried, none with a high level of success. In particular, the systems have issues because an address on a block can be on any of up to four roads and so attempts to fix the issue by giving the roads false names within the database have often failed to give accurate addressing, but such can still be seen on some platforms like Google Maps. Finding an address in the area thus generally requires resorting to asking directions or using one of the many posted public maps.
1Mannheim is rated Sufficiency by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) which evaluates and ranks the relationships between world cities in the context of globalisation. Sufficiency level cities are cities that have a sufficient degree of services so as not to be overly dependent on world cities.
Mannheim has a population of over 305,000 people. Mannheim also forms part of the wider Rhine-Neckar Region which has a population of over 2,400,000 people. Mannheim is the #285 hipster city in the world, with a hipster score of 2.7891 according to the Hipster Index which evaluates and ranks the major cities of the world according to the number of vegan eateries, coffee shops, tattoo studios, vintage boutiques, and record stores. Mannheim is ranked #130 for startups with a score of 4.511.
To set up a UBI Lab for Mannheim see: https://www.ubilabnetwork.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/UBILabNetwork
Mannheim is a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network for Music see: https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities
Twin Towns, Sister Cities Mannheim has links with:
🇹🇷 Beyoğlu, Turkey 🇵🇱 Bydgoszcz, Poland 🇩🇪 Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Germany 🇲🇩 Chișinău, Moldova 🇮🇱 Haifa, Israel 🇱🇹 Klaipėda, Lithuania 🇨🇳 Qingdao, China 🇩🇪 Riesa, Germany 🏴 Swansea, Wales 🇫🇷 Toulon, France 🇨🇦 Windsor, Canada 🇨🇳 Zhenjiang, ChinaUNESCO Creative Cities for Music include: 🇦🇺 Adelaide 🇰🇿 Almaty 🇵🇹 Amarante 🇮🇩 Ambon 🇳🇿 Auckland 🇧🇦 Banja Luka 🇮🇳 Benares 🇬🇼 Bissau 🇨🇴 Bogotá 🇮🇹 Bologna 🇮🇹 Bolzano 🇨🇬 Brazzaville 🇨🇿 Brno 🇵🇱 Bydgoszcz 🇻🇪 Caracas 🇮🇳 Chennai 🇻🇳 Da Lat 🇲🇦 Essaouira 🇨🇱 Frutillar 🇧🇪 Ghent 🏴 Glasgow 🇮🇳 Gwalior 🇯🇵 Hamamatsu 🇩🇪 Hannover 🇨🇺 Havana 🇵🇹 Idanha-a-Nova 🇲🇾 Ipoh 🇺🇸 Kansas City 🇵🇱 Katowice 🇷🇺 Kazan 🇯🇲 Kingston 🇹🇷 Kırşehir 🇵🇹 Leiria 🏴 Liverpool 🇪🇸 Lliria 🇩🇪 Mannheim 🇫🇷 Metz 🇲🇽 Mexicali 🇨🇭 Montreux 🇲🇽 Morelia 🇸🇪 Norrköping 🇮🇹 Pesaro 🇹🇹 Port of Spain 🇨🇻 Praia 🇵🇸 Ramallah 🇧🇷 Salvador 🇮🇷 Sanandaj 🇹🇷 Şanlıurfa 🇩🇴 Santo Domingo 🇪🇸 Seville 🇹🇭 Suphan Buri 🇰🇷 Tongyeong 🇫🇷 Toulouse 🇨🇴 Valledupar 🇨🇱 Valparaíso 🇮🇳 Varanasi 🇭🇷 Varaždin 🇷🇺 Veliky Novgorod 🇭🇺 Veszprém 🇷🇸 Vranje
🇩🇪 Ludwigshafen am Rhein 49.481
🇩🇪 Sankt Wendel 49.467
🇬🇬 St Peter Port 49.456
🇩🇪 Bad Dürkheim 49.45
🇨🇭 Affoltern am Albis 8.45
🇩🇪 Ludwigshafen am Rhein 8.447
🇩🇪 Rüsselsheim am Main 8.433
🇩🇪 Wildeshausen 8.433
🇩🇪 Freudenstadt 8.4
Locations Near: Mannheim 8.45,49.4833
🇩🇪 Ludwigshafen am Rhein 8.447,49.481 d: 0.3
🇩🇪 Ludwigshafen 8.476,49.444 d: 4.8
🇩🇪 Frankenthal 8.35,49.532 d: 9
🇩🇪 Heppenheim 8.633,49.633 d: 21.3
🇩🇪 Bensheim 8.603,49.678 d: 24.3
🇩🇪 Heidelberg 8.708,49.414 d: 20.2
🇩🇪 Germersheim 8.367,49.217 d: 30.3
🇩🇪 Bad Dürkheim 8.167,49.45 d: 20.8
🇩🇪 Neustadt an der Weinstraße 8.142,49.351 d: 26.7
Antipodal to: Mannheim -171.55,-49.483
🇹🇴 Nuku'alofa -175.216,-21.136 d: 16846.4
🇦🇸 Pago Pago -170.701,-14.279 d: 16099.8
🇼🇸 Apia -171.76,-13.833 d: 16050.9
🇵🇫 Papeete -149.566,-17.537 d: 15952.7
🇺🇸 Hilo -155.089,19.725 d: 12149.5
🇺🇸 Maui -156.446,20.72 d: 12067.2
🇺🇸 Maui County -156.617,20.868 d: 12054.2
🇺🇸 Wailuku -156.505,20.894 d: 12049.3