Medieval Pforzheim

Pforzheim sits where the Enz, the Nagold and the Würm meet at the northern edge of the Black Forest, on the site of a Roman river port and first recorded under its present name in 1067. It became a town around 1200 and, in the 13th century, a residence of the margraves of Baden; after the dynasty split, the Baden-Durlach line kept its court here until Margrave Karl II moved it to Durlach in 1565. The margraves’ castle stood on the Schlossberg above the town, and the Schlosskirche St Michael beside it — begun in the 13th century, with a late-Gothic choir — became their burial church.

The humanist Johannes Reuchlin was born here in 1455. French troops burned the town in 1689, and the air raid of 23 February 1945 killed about 17,600 people and destroyed most of what remained, so the medieval town survives only in fragments: the Schlosskirche with the margraves’ tombs, the Archivturm from the castle, and the street plan around the Marktplatz. Since 1767, when the margrave allowed a jewellery and watch manufactory in the town orphanage, Pforzheim has been Germany’s ‘Goldstadt’; the Schmuckmuseum in the Reuchlinhaus tells that story, and the Stadtmuseum, beside the Blumenhof where the medieval market stands, tells the town’s.