Until well into the 20th century, the thermal springs in Wiesbaden were a key element in the history of settlement. Paleolithic spring sacrifices with finds dating back around 20,000 years attest to the attractiveness of the hot springs, which have motivated people to settle in our region from the very beginning. However, it was the Romans who, after occupying the area around Mainz on the left bank of the Rhine between 39 and 37 BC, built the first verifiable settlement at the Wiesbaden hot springs. In 83 AD, construction began on a stone fort above today's city center.

The Roman settlement ("vicus") "Aquae Mattiacae" or "Aquis Mattiacis" (At the Mattiac Waters; the Germanic Mattiac tribe settled in our region in Roman times) was established at the foot of this inner-city slope, along today's Langgasse and around its intersection with Michelsberg and Marktstraße. The Langgasse from Kranzplatz to Mauritiusplatz and its intersection with Michelsberg and Marktstraße have been preserved as a street route in the layout of the city center from Roman times to the present day. This can be described as the Romans' most lasting contribution to Wiesbaden's urban development.

The Heidenmauer, originally around 520 m long, of which around 50 m remain today, is the last visible architectural reminder of Roman times in Wiesbaden's city center.

First mentioned in 829, medieval Wiesbaden comprised three settlement areas with an extensive system of ponds and moats: The walled castle district at today's Schlossplatz called "Stadt", the so-called "Flecken" as a continuation of the Roman-Mattiac settlement around the Mauritius Church and, as the beginning of the later spring district, the "Sauerland", a settlement core in the area of the strongest spring, the Kochbrunnen.

The expansion of the town under the control of the authorities can be traced back to the end of the 17th century: During his reign (1684-1721), Prince Georg August Samuel zu Nassau-Idstein promoted a generous expansion of the town. With the addition of Neugasse and Grabenstraße as well as Mauergasse, Webergasse and Saalgasse to the traditional Langgasse and Michelsberg/Marktstraße axes, Spiegelgasse and the outer Langgasse at Kranzplatz, the city center's layout was given a street system that still exists today. The "New Castle", built at the end of the 16th century in the castle district, roughly on the site of today's Marktkirche, was extended around 1690 and the town wall was also extended around the Sauerland around 1700.

From 1690-1721, the population rose from 644 to 1,321, and by 1800 to around 2,500. Wiesbaden thus outstripped the residential town of Idstein. Until 1800, the city grew inwards with structural densification processes. Despite the changes described above, it is still possible to visualize the shape of Wiesbaden up to the end of the old empire and the onset of the epochal Napoleonic modernization push using the well-known Merian engraving printed in 1655, as the expansion remained essentially the same from this graphic survey to the end of the 18th century.

The relocation of the princely residence to the palace in Biebrich in 1744 by Prince Karl Wilhelm zu Nassau-Usingen also had an impact on Wiesbaden, as there was no suitable building to house the princely administration in Biebrich. The closest possible option was the "New Palace" in Wiesbaden, and this was the beginning of the city's function as the seat of government, which is still so important for the city's development today.

When the princely Nassau-using government moved into the "New Palace" in the castle district, administrative functions were concentrated in Wiesbaden for the first time that went far beyond the tasks of an official administration at a lower level. This assignment of supra-local tasks was soon continued to a greater extent: Nassau-Usingen was the larger of the two Nassau principalities that merged in 1806 in the course of the Napoleonic territorial consolidation in Germany to form the Duchy of Nassau and a constituent state of the Confederation of the Rhine, and Wiesbaden was the largest town in the new state with around 2,500 inhabitants and already the seat of government of one of the constituent principalities. It was therefore only natural that the city should also become the capital of the new duchy.

Following the French model, the rulers soon concentrated all central government offices and the most important courts there. Accordingly, there was no local self-government in the centrally governed and administered unitary state and only a very limited right of citizens' representatives to participate in the decisions of the Schultheißen, the administrative heads of the towns and municipalities appointed by the government.

The ducal government also saw itself as responsible for the structural development of the city and for promoting the spa industry. In the first half of the 19th century, Wiesbaden therefore received decisive impetus from two state building officials, the Nassau building director Carl Florian Goetz and the Nassau building inspector Christian Zais. The city owes its first urban expansion steps, Friedrichstrasse and Nerostrasse, to Goetz, but above all the concept of a spacious north-south promenade to the east of the city center, Wilhelmstrasse.

Zais had an even more formative influence on urban development in the 19th century and far beyond his early death in 1820 with three innovative planning initiatives and the associated buildings. With the Kur- und Gesellschaftshaus(old Kurhaus), inaugurated in 1810, and the new spa center on the upper Wilhelmstraße, he provided the decisive urban planning impetus for Wiesbaden's rapid expansion into a world spa town and "imperial tourist stronghold" of the 19th century.

The realization of Zais' concept is considered one of the most momentous decisions in Wiesbaden's city history. The new Kur- und Gesellschaftshaus and the subsequent buildings on Kureck and along Wilhelmstrasse gave the municipality a completely new, forward-looking spa town identity. The construction of the luxurious Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten (1818-21) pushed through by Zais and the great operational success of this hotel run by his family, which far surpassed the previous standards of Wiesbaden's spa hotels in every respect, brought about a surge in modernization and investment with considerable increases in quality throughout Wiesbaden's competing hotel industry. The urban planning concept developed by Zais in 1818 and soon declared binding by the Nassau government in what was later known as the Historic Pentagon subsequently proved to be the ideal planning framework for the development of the city until the middle of the 19th century.

Urban planners of the new classicist thinking around 1800, such as Goetz and Zais, rejected the absolutist central perspective and dominance of an imperial center. In principle, they combined equal, independent, delimiting urban planning elements, free-standing and yet interrelated buildings according to the laws of geometry and symmetry to create aesthetically balanced, space-forming units. The master builders at the beginning of the 19th century were therefore not only concerned with overcoming external design elements such as the "fatal crooked line" and the "excessive ornamentation" (Winckelmann) of late Baroque and Rococo. In contrast to the Baroque sense of space as the basis of urban planning in the absolutist princely state, which was directed towards the environment from a central, imperial perspective, the liberated individual also had to find a new idea of urban planning and architecture in the new, post-revolutionary order of society from the point of view of fundamental human equality. Against the background of this new programme, the health resorts as "reserves of salvation" for the community of the "noble equals" (and the wealthy), who left the everyday and banal behind and communicated with each other without class barriers, already fulfilled good prerequisites for becoming crystallization points of such a development with their separate function. As the Wiesbaden electoral district corresponded perfectly to this new social model in its then ultra-modern urban form, it formed the basis for the rise of the Nassau government and residential city. In 1843, the population had almost tripled compared to 1817.

In the south of the city in particular, new streets had been added to meet the needs of the upper classes, especially Rheinstraße. At the same time, the district later called Bergkirchenviertel had expanded considerably. Around 1840, Baron Carl Ludwig Friedrich von Rettberg 's villa on Frankfurter Strasse, known as the "Landhaus", marked the beginning of villa development on the Taunus slopes to the east and north of the city center.

The city center underwent a lasting upgrade with the new construction (1837-42) of the ducal ➞ city palace according to plans by the neoclassical Darmstadt court building director Georg Moller. The client, Duke Wilhelm zu Nassau, ruled very autocratically, but attached great importance to building his residence "in the midst of his people" and thus emphasizing the proximity of the Nassau monarchy to the people. This decision had lasting consequences in terms of urban development policy, as it meant that the city center remained a political center, later also as a place where the Hohenzollern emperors held court during their regular stays in Wiesbaden, but above all after the Second World War as the seat of the state parliament of the newly formed federal state of Hesse. The palace construction was linked to the removal of the "New Palace" from 1596, until then the seat of the Nassau State Ministry and the upper administrative offices of the government president. A new palatial building, the Ministerial Building (now the Hessian Ministry of Justice), was therefore built on the corner of Luisenstrasse and Bahnhofstrasse at the same time as the new city palace until 1843 for this political and administrative head of the duchy and also for the Nassau Assembly of Estates, the state parliament.

The new religious buildings brought particularly striking changes to the appearance of the city between 1840 and 1870. The Protestant Mauritiuskirche, which burnt down in 1850, was replaced in 1852-62 by the very prestigious Marktkirche on Schlossplatz. Between 1845 and 1866, the Church of St. Boniface was built on Luisenplatz in two stages as the new main Catholic church. Duke Adolph zu Nassau had the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Elisabeth built on the Neroberg in 1846-55 as a mausoleum for his first wife Elisabeth Duchess zu Nassau, a Russian princess who died in childbirth, and for the services of the many Russian visitors and spa guests. The so-called English Church(Church of St. Augustine of Canterbury, Wiesbaden) was built on Frankfurter Strasse in 1862-65 for the numerous English spa guests. The new synagogue on Michelsberg, built in 1863-69, was one of the buildings from this period that shaped the cityscape of Wiesbaden. It stood at the top of the sequence of architectural focal points along the transverse axis of the city center, from the market church and the castle to the clock tower and the synagogue, until it was burned down and completely destroyed on November 9, 1938. After the Second World War, the city's street planning planned this sacred location by re-routing and widening Coulinstrasse.

In 1800-66, during the time of the Duchy of Nassau, the population had increased more than tenfold to around 30,000 inhabitants. Town life was also shaped by almost as many spa guests every year, around half of whom came from abroad. A new, modern townscape had emerged, with new monarchical and administrative buildings, new churches and a representative synagogue, new spa facilities and a spa district specially designed for modern spa life. In the second half of the 19th century, the planning figure of the historic pentagon that shaped the city was therefore no longer able to accommodate the further growth of the city's population. Exceeding the planning limits in all directions had already begun during the ducal period. Among other things, the "Maria-Hilf-Siedlung" on Platter Straße had already been started as a district for working-class families before the Prussian annexation of Nassau.

After 1866, Wiesbaden was no longer the residence and seat of government, but only served as the capital of one of the more than 40 Prussian administrative districts. In addition to the former Duchy of Nassau, the administrative district of Wiesbaden also included Frankfurt and Hesse-Homburg. On the other hand, Prussia was by far the largest and most important and a particularly dynamically developing constituent state and the leading power in the new German Empire, and its upper middle-class and aristocratic ruling class, headed by the imperial family, whose regular visits to Wiesbaden were among the highlights of every year, quickly chose Wiesbaden as their favorite health resort and a preferred retirement retreat. Thus, the new Prussian rule not only did not bring a standstill in Wiesbaden's development, but - on the contrary - a rapid growth spurt as a fashionable spa town and as a "Prussian pensionopolis". In 1905, the population exceeded the magic number of 100,000.

By comparing the mapping of Wiesbaden's building stock for the years 1868, 1879, 1900 and 1910, the implementation of growth figures in the city's development during the Wilhelmine era can be clearly seen. This was accompanied by a relatively clear, class-specific appearance of the individual new development areas. The streets extending to the south and west of the historic pentagon, structured with rectangular street grids and built in closed construction with an upscale housing standard, were primarily aimed at the influx of the well-off rentier middle class, for whom entire districts were built in Wiesbaden (e.g. the Rheingauviertel). Densification processes in the Bergkirchen area, its further development in a north-westerly direction across Röderstraße and the construction of the "Maria-Hilf-Siedlung" provided housing for the "little" people and the lower-income classes, working-class families, craftsmen and employees of the spa business. The expansion of the villa areas to the north and east, but also along the avenue to Biebrich, met the needs of the city's particularly wealthy new residents. In 1908, statistics in Wiesbaden counted 250 Goldmark millionaires, among others.

As around 70% of Wiesbaden's population at the turn of the 20th century were workers and petty bourgeois and only around 20% belonged to the middle class and the wealthy, there was also a social mix in the building blocks in the streets of the Westend and the southern city center; and low-income earners often lived in courtyard and rear buildings, where small businesses also set up shop. Nevertheless, a class-specific appearance of Wiesbaden's residential areas was (and still is) a hallmark of Wiesbaden's urban development.

The realization that it was necessary to enclose and structure the grid-shaped expansion of the city to the south and west by means of a wide ring road, thus making it easier to manage traffic, had been pursued by city planners since 1871. But it was not until the development plan of 1888 that the first city ring(Erster Ring) from Biebricher Allee to Emser Straße was fixed, and the city plan of 1900 documents its realization. Even before 1900, the first streets of the outer West End ("Feldherrenviertel") were already crossing this inner development boundary. By 1914, a further speculative investment surge had continued the development to the west and southwest of the new Ringstrasse.

In the decades around 1900, Wiesbaden developed into a major city, not only in terms of population and area growth. The appearance also changed during this period, at least in the main streets, and took on a metropolitan character with generally four-storey buildings in the Wilhelminian splendor of late historicism. The new construction and modernization investments in hotel construction in many parts of the inner city were characteristic elements of Wiesbaden's inner city development, but were particularly impressive in the spa district around the Kochbrunnen and on Wilhelmstraße. Outstanding examples are the Hotel Rose on the east side of Kochbrunnenplatz, the Palasthotel opposite it and the new Hotel Nassauer Hof on Kaiser-Friedrich-Platz.

The urban planner Reinhard Baumeister (1833-1917) from Karlsruhe, who was commissioned to plan the expansion of the city at the turn of the century, deliberately ensured its green character, which to this day significantly enhances the quality of life in the city, by ensuring that the valley of the Rambach in the extension of the Kurpark, the Dambach, the Schwarzbach (Nerotal) and the Kesselbach running into the city was kept free of any buildings on the valley floor with his development plan of 1894 and its update of 1905, and by planning all of his newly designed streets with rows of trees and front gardens. Baumeister also pursued the goal of placing significant public buildings in the visual axes of the large, straight streets as urban planning dominants of the city development. The Ringkirche church at the upper end of Rheinstraße is a particularly impressive example of this principle. The Kochbrunnen, a central point of contact for spa guests and day tourists, was given a new version in 1887-90 according to plans by architect Wilhelm Bogler with a fountain temple, drinking hall and adjoining spacious colonnade as a promenade hall, which was demolished in the 1960s as part of the "redevelopment" of the thermal springs and against the backdrop of the decision to relocate the remaining spa treatments to the Aukammtal, with the exception of the wing on Saalgasse as a "modernization measure".

The growth spurt in the second half of the 19th century required technical modernization and expansion. The growth spurt in the second half of the 19th century also required technical modernization and capacity expansions in almost all areas of public infrastructure: 1864-70 water supply network, 1876-79 municipal hospitals, 1884 sewage treatment plant, 1886-92 new sewerage system, 1887 inauguration of the new town hall, 1888 start of tramway construction, 1892 new, extended gasworks, 1894 Royal Court Theatre and 1902 foyer of the theater, 1897 county and district court in Gerichtsstraße, 1898 completion of the municipal power station and start of the conversion of the street lighting, which had been introduced in 1847, from gas to electric light, 1906 inauguration of the main railway station, 1907 of the new Kurhaus, 1913 of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Bad, 1913 of the state library and 1915 of the new city museum.

From this list, the location decisions for the new town hall, for which nine older buildings were demolished, the royal court theater, for whose placement in the spa district adjacent to the southern colonnade even the decision of Emperor Wilhelm II was obtained, the new spa house, built with the demolition of the still popular old spa house by Zais, and the main railway station proved to be special decisions for the inner city development, which were also perceived as such in the controversial discussions of the time. The construction of the new Kurhaus was particularly controversial. However, the city's socially and politically leading upper middle class and its most important representative, Lord Mayor Karl Bernhard von Ibell, considered a new, even more magnificent setting for prestigious events to be indispensable in view of the constantly growing number of visitors and spa guests and regular visits by the emperor.

Finally, the Römertor, a building from 1903 for the historicizing embellishment of the breakthrough of the Coulinstraße through the late Roman Heidenmauer, which served to relieve traffic congestion in the Langgasse, is one of the most characteristic examples of Wiesbaden's most expansive urban development phase in the late 19th century and the architectural style of historicism that has been preserved to this day. The emperor himself was often very interested in the archaeological search for traces of the ancient past. He also had excavations of the Roman "Aquae Mattiacae" in Wiesbaden explained to him. On the other hand, technical progress was unstoppable, and so the city did not hesitate to replace the actual Roman monument with a pseudo-Roman one for a progressive traffic solution.

The collapse of the Wilhelmine Empire with its defeat in the First World War and the galloping inflation that followed shattered the economic foundations of the social classes supporting the German Empire and the monarchy, which had also been the pillars of Wiesbaden's prosperity before 1914. The growing insecurity caused by the sudden lack of prospects for many people, the social and political conflicts triggered by unemployment and misery in Wiesbaden, exacerbated by the occupation by the French and British military, but above all the city's budget emergency, which lasted for many years, largely paralyzed all initiatives for an active municipal urban development policy.

In 1924, there were almost 100,000 visitors again, including 22,500 spa guests, but with considerably less purchasing power than before 1914. In 1932, 72,980 people were counted in gainful employment, including 19,260 unemployed, but also 47,000 guests paying spa tax who stayed in Wiesbaden for a week or longer. In 1938, the last spa season before the Second World War, there were 58,000. The data since 1929 already refers to an urban area that had been significantly expanded by incorporations, which increased the number of inhabitants to around 152,000.

The 1930 development plan for the city center contained only minor additions to the building areas. Urban expansions for wealthy rentiers moving in were no longer needed. During the Weimar period, there was a need for new housing, especially affordable rental housing for working-class families and other socially disadvantaged groups, as well as for the lower middle classes, who were looking for inexpensive homes of their own. For the latter, the Eigene Scholle estate on Lahnstrasse and the Eigenheim estate on Idsteiner Strasse were built in the Sonnenberg area. For the former target group, "social housing" blocks of flats were built primarily on the edge of the outer West End, particularly on Klarenthaler Strasse and Elsässer Platz. In Biebrich and Dotzheim, the city also made building land available on which a number of housing estates could be built on the basis of heritable building rights, i.e. without any immediate purchase costs for the plots, by means of self-help for the unemployed.

Compared to the last decades before 1914, however, Wiesbaden's building development was generally characterized by stagnation despite such individual impulses. The most spectacular new steps in Wiesbaden's urban development were the result of private foundations and embellished the city. The realization of the Reisinger-Anlage in 1932 and the subsequent Herbert-Anlage in 1937(Reisinger-und-Herbert-Anlagen) created a generous green corridor between the main railway station and the city centre. And the construction of the "swimming and sunbathing pool", the Opelbad on the Neroberg, in 1933/1934 created a facility that was attractive far beyond Wiesbaden, a high point and highlight of Wiesbaden's charming urban landscape.

By the 1930 Reichstag elections, the NSDAP had already become the strongest party in Wiesbaden. It was only after Hitler came to power in the Reich on January 30, 1933 and the subsequent elimination of the democratic parties that the National Socialist program determined Wiesbaden's urban policy. For the city's development, however, specifically National Socialist accents only became apparent with the destruction of all synagogues in the Reichspogromnacht on November 9, 1938, including the main synagogue on Michelsberg, which dominated the cityscape. Its destruction in the presence of a large, jeering crowd not only removed an important architectural work of art, a monument and landmark of Wiesbaden's city center, but also signaled the brutality of the political development in Germany, which consequently led to the Second World War.

The crime was a beacon on the path that led to the partial destruction of the city on the night of the bombing from February 2 to 3, 1945 and to the consequences of Germany's total defeat and surrender on May 8, 1945, which was both an event of destruction and liberation and opened up new perspectives. The Quellenviertel and Kurviertel districts were particularly affected by widespread destruction. The Paulinenschlösschen and the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, among others, were completely destroyed. The town hall, Kurhaus, state theater, colonnades on Bowling Green, city palace, market church and Biebrich Palace suffered severe damage.

On March 28, 1945, American troops entered the city. Confiscating a whole series of still intact buildings, especially former hotels, they set up their air force headquarters here after the demarcation of their German occupation zone.

After the Second World War, Wiesbaden's urban development was given a special character by the proclamation of the city as the state capital of Hesse on October 12, 1945, giving the city a promising future for the first time. The placement of the Hessian State Parliament, i.e. the representatives of the people as the sovereign in the democratic state, in the former ducal, then royal city palace, gave Wiesbaden's city center a new function and a new weighty status as a center of democratic political activity. The establishment of the state government in Wiesbaden, the state chancellery, several ministries and a number of other state offices, as well as the accompanying, inevitable establishment of a number of civil society organizations geared towards cooperation with the state's political decision-making bodies and their subordinate authorities, such as trade unions and municipal umbrella organizations, quickly had a formative influence on the city's structure.

After 1949, location decisions were made as part of the development of the Federal Republic of Germany: the Federal Criminal Police Office began its activities here in 1953, the Federal Statistical Office in 1955 and the Military District Administration IV in 1956. The public administrations were followed by private companies from a wide range of service sectors, banks, insurance companies, publishing houses and umbrella organizations. Wiesbaden thus developed into a city of administrations, with a focus on the public sector, even more so than it had ever been as a Nassau residence or Prussian metropolis.

This structural change was intensified by the decline of the spa industry. Despite all the city's efforts, it was unable to compensate for the slump caused by the events of the war and the hotel confiscations by the American occupying forces in the immediate post-war period. Even the city's decision to relocate the spa operations to the Aukammtal, where various spa clinics and a new thermal bath were built and the German Clinic for Diagnostics was also established, and thus to concentrate the Wiesbaden spa on the medical and surgical treatment of rheumatological diseases, did not prevent the number of spa guests from no longer exceeding an annual average of 10,000 from the 1970s onwards. However, a congress industry developed independently of the spa business, for which the Rhein-Main-Hallen were built in several stages on the edge of the city center, on the site of the former Taunus and Rheinbahnhof train stations, as a large exhibition and congress center. This also gave Wiesbaden supra-regional significance as a congress city.

Finally, Wiesbaden's industry, which was concentrated in the suburbs on the Rhine, was able to more than make up for its major war damage in just a few years with new, modern production facilities. Wiesbaden companies developed into market leaders in cement, film and sparkling wine production, and companies with specialized, globally competitive product ranges also emerged in the metal sector. However, the share of the productive, industrial sector has never outweighed the service sector in Wiesbaden.

Wiesbaden's urban planning developed new special areas for public and private administration, primarily along the arterial roads from the city center, including Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage, Gustav-Stresemann-Ring, Berliner Straße and Moltkering, on the "Behördenberg" on Konrad-Adenauer-Ring and along Mainzer Straße. Large-scale industrial estates were built east of Mainzer Strasse (Hasengartenstrasse and others), between Biebrich and Schierstein (Äppelallee - Hagenauer Strasse), in Erbenheim (Kreuzberger Ring) and between Kastel and Kostheim (Petersweg).

In the first three decades after the Second World War, overcoming the housing problems was the main task of Wiesbaden's urban development. In 1945, Wiesbaden's population had fallen to around 137,000, mainly as a result of the destruction in the city. Soon after the end of hostilities, around 20,000 people returned to the city, having fled to the surrounding villages out of fear of the bombing. As "only" 30% of Wiesbaden was partially destroyed, the city also became a preferred destination for returnees from the fronts and prison camps as well as refugees and displaced persons from the former German eastern territories and the Sudetenland. At the beginning of the 1950s, the population was already around a quarter of a million, crowded together in the undestroyed part of the housing stock and in more or less makeshift quarters. As a result, the central task was to build housing for around 120,000 people, as well as all the necessary follow-up facilities for education, care and social support.

As a result, around 40,000 new apartments were built by 1975, mainly in various forms of publicly subsidized rental housing, by rounding off the old building areas, including on the outskirts of the city centre, but above all through new residential areas in the districts of Biebrich, Schierstein, Dotzheim, Bierstadt, Erbenheim, Kastel and Kostheim. The large housing estates Parkfeld, Klarenthal and Schelmengraben, which were started in the 1960s, were the result of urban planning advice from the renowned planner Ernst May. The last urban development on a comparable scale with predominantly multi-storey rental housing was the Sauerland estate, construction of which began in 1995. In addition, single-family home areas expanded on the outskirts of practically all suburbs.

The decision by the American occupying power to station the European High Command of the US Air Force in Wiesbaden posed a special challenge for urban development. In addition to various individual buildings in the city, the US military took possession of the barracks complexes on Schiersteiner Strasse ("Camp Lindsey") and in Dotzheim-Freudenberg ("Camp Pieri") and the military airfield in Erbenheim for this and other US military offices. Urban planning developed new housing estates between Sonnenberg and Bierstadt ("Crestview" and "Aukamm") and on Berliner Strasse ("Hainerberg") for around 20,000 US-Americans and their families. The relocation of the air force headquarters to Ramstein/Pfalz (1973) led to a decline in this population share. However, Wiesbaden and the Erbenheim military airfield remained a focal point of the US Army in Germany even after 1989, when the American military strength in the Federal Republic was reduced following German reunification and Camp Lindsey and Camp Pieri were vacated in 1993 and converted into new German districts as part of this development. In 2008, the US government decided to relocate the US High Command in Europe from Heidelberg to Wiesbaden. To this end, the military airfield in Erbenheim was further expanded from 2009 and extended to the south with an additional housing estate. With the relocation of around 4,000 uniformed and civilian members of the US military and their families from the Neckar to Wiesbaden, the number of US citizens in this city will once again rise permanently to around 18,000.

Reconstruction after the destruction of the Second World War had essentially followed the historical urban layout in the city centre, and the traditional urban planning standards had also been more or less maintained in the Kurviertel, which had been extensively destroyed. Moreover, the new buildings in the old districts in the first few years after the end of the war were generally based on the historical plot layouts and height developments. Many of the "only" severely damaged 2,500 residential buildings were also rebuilt while preserving the exterior facades. The most important representative public buildings were rebuilt or - with the exception of the town hall - repaired in such a way that the historical appearance was preserved. The Kurhaus and Staatstheater were even completely restored in several stages. Thus, despite the destruction caused by the war, Wiesbaden remained an urban "Gesamtkunstwerk" of the 19th century with important examples of classicist urban planning and a unique urban document of historicism.

The greatest threat to this urban heritage came from urban planning itself at the beginning of the 1960s. The urban development concept published in 1963 by city planner Ernst May envisaged the removal of the entire historic building fabric of the villa area on the Bierstadter Hang ("City Ost"), the Bergkirchenviertel, the Südstadt between Rheinstraße and Kaiser-Friedrich-Ring and the Altstadt "Schiffchen" between Grabenstraße and Wagemannstraße. Instead, uniform new building blocks and high-rise buildings were to be erected everywhere, with the exception of the Schiffchen, in whose place May planned a large multi-storey parking garage. May's urban development plans were supplemented by an overall traffic plan developed at the same time by traffic planner Kurt Leibbrand with a car-friendly ring road and traffic axis system through the city, with several elevated roads, one of which was even to run over the Kurpark at the rear. In addition to an emotional aversion to the architectural heritage of the 19th century, the plans were based on the prevailing urban planning theory of the separation of functions to be aimed for at the time, according to which the inner cities were to be restructured exclusively as "core areas" for business and commercial uses and new satellite towns were to be developed in the outer areas for residential use. Accordingly, May also proposed various large housing estates for social rental housing (including Klarenthal, Parkfeld and Schelmengraben), as well as new, large single-family housing areas (e.g. Heidestock and Hirtenstraße in Sonnenberg).

While the new traffic planning took shape in the 1970s with the first widening of the main roads, including the six-lane extension of Schwalbacher Strasse and the elevated bridge on Michelsberg, which was demolished in 2001, the urban conversion plans in "City Ost", the first of May's inner-city urban development projects to be approved in 1965, led to massive land speculation with tenant evictions and illegal house demolitions. However, a citizens' initiative supported by the Young Socialists and led by Jörg Jordan, who later became head of the urban development department, and Achim Exner, who later became mayor, mobilized the public against the destruction of the city. They succeeded in initiating a paradigm shift in the SPD, the majority party in the city parliament at the time, from 1971 onwards and, with the program "For a humane Wiesbaden", succeeded in pushing through a counter-concept to the May/Leibbrand plans in local politics.

The theoretical approach and the main urban planning objective of this new urban policy was to preserve the city as a living social organism and thus to maintain mixed structures for living and working. In view of the economic balance of power in the competition for the most attractive inner city areas, the preservation of mixed structures in the inner city meant, above all, securing the residential function under planning law and providing targeted support through social infrastructure. Monument protection and cityscape preservation were given high priority. Major parts of this program were implemented between 1973 and 1979 under Jordan. Among other things, the pedestrian zone was realized and Schlossplatz was redesigned as a car-free square area, the villas in "City Ost" were largely placed under monument protection, selective modernization was initiated in the Bergkirchenviertel without evicting tenants, Adolfsallee in Südstadt was not developed into a freeway feeder road as planned, but was redesigned as a park, and the "Schiffchen" was allocated to individual applicants willing to maintain the buildings.

Since this upheaval in local politics, spectacular examples of the idea of securing an attractive future for the city by preserving and maintaining the evidence of Wiesbaden's charming urban past have followed right up to the recent past: The relocation of the State Chancellery to Kranzplatz in the former Hotel Rose in 2004 brought about a considerable revaluation of the historic city quarter around the Kochbrunnen, which had been threatened by decay since the decline of the spa. The same applies to the new plenary building erected for the Hessian State Parliament at the rear of the City Palace and the associated realization of a new square in the old town on Grabenstrasse in 2005-08. In view of May's urban plans to replace the old town development between Grabenstrasse and Wagemannstrasse with a park palette, the State Building Administration demolished the historic riding hall of the palace at the rear of the palace grounds in 1960 and instead erected a plenary hall building for the State Parliament in contemporary container architecture. Since 2000, a new parliament building has been under construction, which adheres exactly to the scale and historical building boundaries of the old riding hall and thus to Moller's palace design. A new, attractive old town square now stretches between the new building and the historic row of houses. The fundamental decision made in 1974 to preserve the Altstadt-Schiffchen thus found its appropriate urban development confirmation 30 years later and the urban development program "For a human Wiesbaden" for this oldest area of Wiesbaden's city centre was completed.

As early as 1978, the urban development concept, which had been pushed through against May's plans, received nationwide recognition, and Wiesbaden was awarded the gold medal in the national competition "Stadtgestalt und Denkmalschutz im Städtebau" (Urban Design and Monument Protection in Urban Development) as the national winner among the major cities. The urban development spurt in the 19th century, which is still largely visible in Wiesbaden's cityscape, and the diverse preserved architecture of classicism and historicism ultimately formed the first of two reasons for the city's application for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2005. In 2016, the application was withdrawn and Wiesbaden was also eliminated from the international field of 19th century spa towns. Despite this, there is widespread agreement among city politicians that the preservation of the historically evolved cityscape must remain an important basis for future urban development decisions.