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Map of Karlsruhe
A city laid out with ruler and compass from a single point: the palace tower. Streets run south from it into town and paths run north into the forest, and the whole map turns around it.
What you see on the map
The fan. Margrave Charles William of Baden-Durlach founded the city in 1715 with the palace at the centre of a 32-pointed star. The southern half is streets, and they form the fan that gives Karlsruhe its nickname, the Fächerstadt.
The forest. The other half is straight paths that disappear into the Hardtwald to the north. Drawn in lines, the forest shows the whole star, with rings of paths crossing it.
The palace and its garden. At the centre, the circle of the Schlossgarten, with the palace opening towards the city like an arc.
The city. South of the fan, the Kaiserstraße crosses it from east to west; further down, the gridded Südstadt and the Stadtgarten, with its ponds, by the station.
Which scale and paper suit it
1:14,000 on a 30 cm square, as in the picture, covers almost 4 km with the palace at the centre: the whole star, from the forest to the station.
1:6,000 on A3 moves in on the fan, with every block between the rays.
In sepia, as here, it looks like a Baroque plan; in black ink, like an engraving.
Make it yours
Open the example and move the frame: Durlach, the old town the margrave left, has a medieval layout of its own.
Change all the colours at once with a theme (black ink, sepia, coral, night, blueprint) and download it as PNG. With a free account, also element by element, at 600 dpi, as vector PDF and as SVG.
