Mannheim, Germany

Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany, the second largest city in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located between the cities of Frankfurt and Stuttgart. 
Mannheim is designated as the center of the so-called Rhine-Neckar metropolitan area. This is due to the fact that the city lies at the mouth of the navigable rivers Rhine and Neckar. Immediately opposite Mannheim, on the other bank of the Rhine, is another large German city - Ludwigshafen, and about 20 km and the city of Heidelberg.
Mannheim received official status as a city only in 1607. The architecture of the city is subordinated to the Baroque - Mannheim is one of the few German cities whose urban plans were drawn during the period and within the so-called "northern baroque".
It was conceived as an "ideal city", with clear, geometric shapes, which is why today it is often called the "city of squares". In the XVIII century it developed especially dynamically. The princes of Kurpfalz moved their residence to Mannheim and at that time the city competed with other German political and cultural centers.
In the 19th century, Mannheim became one of the most important German industrial centers. Mannheim suffered severe damage during World War II because of its economic and strategic importance. Some of the buildings after the war have been partially or completely restored, such as the former palace, now a university.
Attractions in Mannheim include the Mannheim Art Gallery, the Rice-Engelhorn Museum, the National Theater, the Baden-Württemberg Museum of Labor and Technology, the Louisenpark and the Water Tower.
The Mannheim Art Gallery is the largest museum of contemporary art in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan area. It is also one of the most renowned exhibition spaces in Germany, with one of the best collections of contemporary sculpture in Germany, as well as a serious collection of works of classical modernism, e.g. the famous painting "The Execution of Emperor Maximilian" by Edouard Manet.
The Rice-Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim are a museum complex uniting the World Heritage Museum, the Zoohouse Museum of Archeology, the Schillerhouse Museum of Schiller and the ZEPHYR Museum of Photography. The museums are named after the donor industrialists Carl Rice and Kurt Engelhorn.