Welcome to
**The green oasis in Karlsruhe**
Centrally located, Friedrichsplatz invites you to take a break from everyday life—right in the heart of the city center.
The entire square originally stretched **from Landgraben** across [Erbprinzenstraße](https://www.karlsruhe-erleben.de/attraktion/erbprinzenstrasse-b3d465abe2) ** to Kriegsstraße**. Around 1800, the garden, which belonged to a small castle owned by Crown Prince Karl Ludwig and his wife Amalie, was laid out in the **English garden style**. Erbprinzenstraße, an open public street that divided the garden in two, was given grotto-style exits at that time, which connected the two parts underground. After the early death of the heir to the throne, the margravine had a memorial to her late husband erected in the south of the garden and her own building constructed on Ritterstraße.
As the margraves and later grand dukes of Baden had amassed diverse collections of coins, weapons, minerals, natural history specimens, antiquities, and books over the centuries, plans were made in the second half of the 19th century to expand the court library and the scientific collections. The architect Karl Josef Berckmüller was commissioned to design a new building and the layout of the square. The new collection building, the **current Natural History Museum**, was built in Renaissance style on the southern half of the garden, and the square was enclosed by private houses on the northern and eastern sides. The buildings for entrepreneurs and manufacturers were grouped together on the ground floor, which was intended for commercial use, by a uniform arcade.
During World War II, a large part of the development was destroyed. Initially, one of the collection points for rubble was set up on the square before work began in the 1950s to close off the building rows again.
Today, the square is often used for events.
Source: DZT Knowledge Graph
