Immediately north of the city lies the Schönbuch, a densely wooded nature park. The Swabian Alb mountains rise about Template:Convert (beeline Tübingen City to Roßberg - 869 m) to the southeast of Tübingen.
The Ammer and Steinlach rivers are tributaries of the Neckar river, which flows in an easterly direction through the city, just south of the medievalold town. Large parts of the city are hilly, with the Schlossberg and the Österberg in the city centre and the Schnarrenberg and Herrlesberg, among others, rising immediately adjacent to the inner city.
The highest point is at about Template:Convertabove sea level near Bebenhausen in the Schönbuch forest, while the lowest point is Template:Convert in the city's eastern Neckar valley. The geographical centre of the state of Baden-Württemberg is in a small forest called Elysium, near the Botanical Gardens of the city's university.
The area was probably first settled by ancient humans in the 12th millennium BC. The Romans left some traces here in AD 85, when they built a limes frontier wall at the Neckar River. Tübingen dates from the 6th or 7th century, when the region was populated by the Alamanni people. Some historians argue that the Battle of Solicinium was fought at Spitzberg, a mountain in Tübingen, in AD 367, although there is no evidence for this.Template:Citation needed
From 1146, Count Hugo V (1125–52) was promoted to count palatine as Hugo I. Tübingen was established as the capital of a County Palatine of Tübingen. By 1231, Tübingen was a civitas, indicating recognition by the Crown of civil liberties and a court system.
In 1262, an Augustinian monastery was established by Pope Alexander IV in Tübingen; in 1272, a Franciscan monastery was founded. In 1300, a Latin school (today's Uhland-Gymnasium) was founded. During the Protestant Reformation, which Duke Ulrich of Württemberg converted to, he disestablished the Franciscan monastery in 1535.
Between 1470 and 1483, St. George's Collegiate Church was built. The collegiate church offices provided the opportunity for what soon afterwards became the most significant event in Tübingen's history: the founding of the Eberhard Karls University by Duke Eberhard im Bart of Württemberg in 1477, thus making it one of the oldest universities in Central Europe. It became soon renowned as one of the most influential places of learning in the Holy Roman Empire, especially for theology (a Protestant faculty, Tübinger Stift, was established in 1535 in the former Augustinian monastery). Today, the university is still the biggest source of income for the residents of the city and one of the biggest universities in Germany with more than 26,000 students.
In the course of the Thirty Years' War, the Lutheran town was occupied by the Catholic League between 1622 and 1625, by the Swedes in 1638, and by the French from 1647 to 1649. It was also devastated by plague.
In 1789, parts of the old town burned down, but were later rebuilt in the original style. In 1798 the Allgemeine Zeitung, a leading newspaper in early 19th-century Germany, was founded in Tübingen by Johann Friedrich Cotta. At his residence, the Cottahaus, a sign commemorates Goethe's stay of a few weeks while visiting his publisher: "Hier kotzte Goethe" (lit.: "Goethe puked here").
From the beginning of the 19th century, the town grew significantly beyond its medieval borders for the first time with the rectangular Wilhelmsvorstadt at the Neue Aula and the Botanical Garden. In 1861, with the opening on the right bank of the Neckar of today's main train station, Tübingen was connected to the Royal Württemberg State Railways network.
In 1873, the 10th Württemberg Infantry Regiment was quartered in barracks erected behind the station, the later Thiepval Kaserne so named for the village where the regiment suffered heavy losses during the First World WarBattle of the Somme in 1916. Another barracks was built in 1913, which had the name Neue Kaserne, but later got the name Loretto-Kaserne. In the 1930's, a further barracks was built in the course of National Socialistrearmament.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp After the war all three barracks were occupied by French troops until 1991. All three barracks were repurposed and got new destination as homes for students and residents and for small shops and businesses or public services. The Loretto-Kaserne is now the Loretto Quarter. Today, the repurposed Hindenburg Barracks are at the centre of an award-winning mixed business-residential development, the "French Quarter" (Französische Viertel).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Since then Tübingen is demilitarised and no longer has any military units, military bases or military training areas.
In 1934, in a rare instance of resistance to the new order, Corps Suevia, one of the university's typically patriotic and conservative student fraternities (Burschenschaften), refused an order to exclude Jewish students and was dissolved.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
There were three bombing raids on the town during Second World War, but damage was comparatively slight: the Neckar Bridge and some 85 houses.<ref>Erich Keyser (1955), Württembergisches Städtebuch. Stuttgart, p. 489.</ref> In April 1945, the town was surrendered to the French who were to remain as occupiers until the creation of the German Federal Republic in 1949, and as an allied garrison until the end of the Cold War in the 1990s (after which, the vacated Thiepval Barracks served as a hostel for asylum seekers and German immigrants from Eastern Europe).<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp Consistent with the role of the Marshall Plan in post-war reconstruction, the United States also had a presence in the town. Originally the Amerika Haus, the German-American Institute ("d.a.i."), at the Neckar Bridge continues to promote English-language classes and "cultural exchange".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In 1946, under the French, Tübingen served as the capital of the consolidated state of Württemberg-Hohenzollern, but in 1952, in a further amalgamation, it was absorbed in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg with its capital in Stuttgart.
In the second half of the 20th century, Tübingen's administrative area was extended beyond what is now called the "core city" to include several outlying small towns and villages. Most notable among these is Bebenhausen, a village clustered around a castle and Bebenhausen Abbey, a Cisterciancloister about Template:Convert north of Tübingen.
In the 1960s, Tübingen was one of the centres of the German student movement and of the protests of 1968,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> which made an issue of perceived continuities between the Federal Republic and the Hitler regime.<ref>Salvanou, Emilia (2022-05-23). "Memory and Protest in the West German Peace Movement of 1960s". Open Journal of Political Science. 12 (3): 423–441.</ref> Emerging from this scene, in the early 1970s, a graduate of the university, Gudrun Ensslin, led her Red Army Faction in a nation-wide campaign of bombing and assassination.
In a town in which neither of the major federal parties, the SPD and the CDU, could command majorities, in 1980 a very different successor to the generation of '68 emerged as an electoral force. Since 2004, the Greens have been the largest party in the local council (Gemeinderat). In the 2024 local elections (in which there was no mandate for the AfD or other far-right groupings), they commanded over a third of the vote.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Template:As of, the city had 90,000 inhabitants. Life in the city is dominated by its roughly 28,000 students. Tübingen is best described as a mixture of old and distinguished academic flair, including liberal and green politics on one hand and traditional German-style student fraternities on the other, with rural-agricultural environs and shaped by typical Lutheran-Pietist characteristics, such as austerity and a Protestant work ethic, and traditional Swabian elements, such as frugality, order, and tidiness. The city is home to many picturesque buildings from previous centuries and lies on the River Neckar.
Template:As of, the German weekly magazine Focus published a national survey, according to which Tübingen had the highest quality of life of all cities in Germany. Factors taken into consideration included the infrastructure, the integration of bicycle lanes into the road system, a bus system connecting surrounding hills and valleys, late-night services, areas of the city that can be reached on foot, the pedestrianised old town, and other amenities and cultural events offered by the university. Tübingen is the city with the youngest average population in Germany.
In central Tübingen, the Neckar divides briefly into two streams, forming the elongated Neckarinsel (Neckar Island), famous for its Platanenallee with high plane trees, which are around 200 years old, and for the National Socialist-themed memorial to the composer and Volkslied collector, Friedrich Silcher.<ref name=":0" />Template:Rp
Pedestrians can reach the island via stairs on the narrow ends leading down from a bridge spanning the Neckar, and by a smaller foot bridge nearer the middle of the island. During the summer, the Neckarinsel is occasionally the venue for concerts, plays, and literary readings. The row of historical houses across one side of the elongated Neckarinsel is called the Neckarfront and includes the house with adjoining tower where poet and philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin spent the last 36 years of his life, as he struggled with mental instability.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Tübingen's Altstadt (old town) survived World War II due to the city's lack of heavy industry. The result is a growing domestic tourism business as visitors come to wander through one of the few completely intact historic Altstädte in Germany. The highlights of Tübingen include its crooked cobblestone lanes, narrow-stair alleyways picking their way through the hilly terrain, streets lined with canals, and well-maintained traditional half-timbered houses.
Old city landmarks include the city hall on Markt Square and the Hohentübingen Castle, now part of the University of Tübingen. The central landmark is the Stiftskirche (Collegiate Church). Along with the rest of the city, the Stiftskirche was one of the first to convert to Martin Luther's protestant church. As such, it maintains (and carefully defends) several "Roman Catholic" features, such as patron saints. Below the Rathaus is a quiet, residential street called the Judengasse, the former Jewish neighborhood of Tübingen until the city's Jews were expelled in 1477. On the street corner is a plaque commemorating the fate of Tübingen's Jews.
The centre of Tübingen is the site of weekly and seasonal events, including regular market days on the Holzmarkt by the Stiftskirche and the Marktplatz by the Rathaus, an outdoor cinema in winter and summer, festive autumn and Christmas markets and (formerly) Europe's largest Afro-Brazilian festival.
Students and tourists also come to the Neckar River in the summer to visit beer gardens or go boating in Stocherkähne, the Tübingen equivalent of Oxford and Cambridgepunts, only slimmer. A Stocherkahn carries up to 20 people. On the second Thursday of June, all Stocherkahn punts take part in a major race, the Stocherkahnrennen.
Bebenhausen Abbey lies in the village of Bebenhausen, a district of Tübingen. A subdivision of the pilgrimage route known as the Way of St. James starts here and runs through Tübingen.
Tübingen is governed by the mayor, elected by citizens every eight years, and by the municipal council, elected by citizens every five years.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Boris Palmer, a former member of the Greens, has been mayor since 2007, re-elected in 2014 and 2022 and on his third term until 2030.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Tübingen's council decided that the city should be climate-neutral by 2030.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 2022, the city was the first in Germany to tax disposable food packaging.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Restaurants in Tübingen are charged 50 cents per disposable cup and cardboard bowl, and 20 cents per piece of cutlery.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Tübingen and Reutlingen with a population of over 100,000 (about Template:Convert east) form a large centre of the Neckar-Alb region. Both cities are based on a different heritage and always belonged to different administrative entities. While they both had a long lasting rivalry they also complement each other. Reutlingen is more business oriented and industrialized and is successful in engineering and trade, while Tübingen excels in education and science, specialized health care and arts. The double centre is surrounded by smaller cities and connected to Albstadt, Balingen, Hechingen, Metzingen, Münsingen, Rottenburg, that each form middle centres and contribute to the high population density of the region.
Administratively, it is not part of the Stuttgart Region, bordering it to the north and west (Böblingen district). However, the city and northern parts of its district can be regarded as belonging to that region in a wider regional and cultural context.
Tübingen is divided into 22 districts, the city core of twelve districts (population of about 51,000) and ten outer districts (suburbs) (population of about 31,000):
Tübingen has a notable arts culture as well as nightlife. In addition to the full roster of official and unofficial university events that range from presentations by the university's official poet in residence to parties hosted by the student associations of each faculty, the city can boast of several choirs, theatre companies and nightclubs. Also, Tübingen's Kunsthalle (art exhibition hall), on the "Wanne", houses two or three exhibits of international note each year.
Since World War II, Tübingen's population has almost doubled from about 45,000 to the current 88,000, also due to the incorporation of formerly independent villages into the city in the 1970s.
Currently, Lord Mayor Boris Palmer (Green Party) has set the ambitious goal of increasing the population of Tübingen to 100,000 within the next several years. To achieve this, the city is closing gaps between buildings within the city proper by allowing new houses to be built there; this is also to counter the tendency of urban sprawl and land consumption that has been endangering the preservation of rural landscapes of Southern Germany. [1]
For their commitment to their international partnership, the Council of Europe awarded the Europe Prize to Tübingen and Aix-en-Provence in 1965.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The city's dedication to European understanding is also reflected in the naming of several streets and squares, including the large Europaplatz (Europe Square) outside the railway station.
Local public transport: The city, due to its high student population, features an extensive public bus network with more than 20 lines connecting the city districts and places outside of Tübingen such as Ammerbuch, Gomaringen and Nagold. There are also several night bus lines in the early hours every day. A direct bus is available to Stuttgart Airport (via Leinfelden-Echterdingen) as well as to Böblingen and Reutlingen.
More than 10,000 children and young adults in Tübingen regularly attend school. There are 30 schools in the city, some of which consist of more than one type of school. Of these, 17 are primary schools while the others are for secondary education: four schools are of the lowest rank, Hauptschule, three of the middle rank, Realschule, and six are Gymnasien (grammar schools). There also are four vocational schools (Berufsschule) and three special needs schools.
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Johann Friedrich Cotta (1764–1832), publisher of many important writers of his time, industrial pioneer and politician; took over the local family publishing business.<ref>Template:Cite EB1911</ref>
Felix Hoppe-Seyler (1825–1895), founded the disciplines of biochemistry and molecular biology, discovered the blood pigment hemoglobin
Lothar Meyer (1830–1895), chemist, one of the founders of the periodic table of chemical elements alongside Dmitri Mendeleev.<ref>Template:Cite EB1911</ref>
Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022), held a chair of dogmatic theology at the university 1966–69
Hans Küng (1928–2021), Roman-Catholic theologian and author, professor of theology, critic of the official church, creator of Foundation for a Global Ethic (Stiftung Weltethos), lived and died here
