The city center is the heart of Karlsruhe and is full of life. Regardless of whether you study, work, spend your free time, live or go shopping in one of the numerous shopping opportunities - everyone is catered for! Administratively, the city center is divided into an eastern and western area. Karl-Friedrich-Straße serves as the border.
-- Downtown East --
The inner city east, the smallest district of Karlsruhe, stretches from the market square to the Durlacher Tor, from the Adenauerring, to the Ettlinger Tor and Kapellenstrasse. Part of the district - the "old town" and therefore the oldest part - corresponds to Klein-Karlsruhe, a former settlement of building tradesmen in the castle area and was incorporated in 1812. The buildings built in the early years of Karlsruhe can still be found in fewer numbers today. After the old town was renovated in the 1970s, the original building structure of the "village" almost completely disappeared.
The eastern Kaiserstrasse serves as an extension of the actual shopping and service center in the western half of Karlsruhe and the west of the city center. As an eye-catcher and recreational area, the inner city east has the Karlsruhe Castle with the adjacent castle park or Hardtwald in the northern part, as well as the KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology University.
-- Downtown West --
The western part of the city center between the market square and Mühlburger Tor is a business and service center par excellence. 9,000 people live in this district and 25,000 are employed in the individual companies there. Kaiserstraße serves as a traditional shopping mile, which is rounded off by the “Postgalerie” at Europaplatz and the Ettlinger Tor Center at Ettlinger Tor. Karlsruhe has long sought to expand its inner-city shopping and service functions. In 2005, this became a reality with the construction of the Ettlinger Tor Center. The Federal Constitutional Court and the Federal Court of Justice are also located in this part of the city center. Other public facilities in this district would be; the Evangelical Upper Church Council, the Baden State Museum and the Baden State Library and the Karlsruhe city administration with the one at the town hall on the market square.