What to See in Kaiserslautern - Top Sights and Attractions

Theatre in Kaiserslautern, Germany. The Pfalztheater is a theatre building and company in the German city of Kaiserslautern, Rhineland-Palatine. It is the only three-genre venue in the state, putting on music, drama and dance.

The town's first theatre was built in 1862, financed by Andreas Müller, owner of the Spittelmühle in Kaiserslautern. It stood on Theaterstraße (now Karl-Marx-Straße) on the corner of Gasstraße. It was destroyed by fire a few years later and rebuilt by Müller. In 1874, the theatre was converted into a public limited company. The shares were taken over in 1897 by the town of Kaiserslautern, as a municipal theatre. It grew to the Städtebundoper during the first decades of the 20th century, in a cooperation with other theatres in the state, especially with Pirmasens and Zweibrücken. Productions continued there until the building was completely destroyed by bombing on 14 August 1944. Performances resumed in October 1945 at the Capitol cinema. When funding had been raised, the Film-Palast cinema was converted into a permanent replacement for the lost theatre, opening in September 1950.^[1]

Wildlife park in Kaiserslautern, Germany. The Betzenberg Wildlife Park in Kaiserslautern, Germany, was founded in 1970 with the aim of enabling the population to observe native species of animals - including those that used to live wild around Kaiserslautern but are no longer native there today.

Today the park also has a role in protecting species that are threatened by extinction, such as the Wisent and other endangered animals. The park is home to owls, wild boar, lynx, mouflon, bred back tarpans, aurochs and other animals. It also has a woodland school in the middle of an old forest that, in places is 120 years old, as well as the Eichenkranz, a stand of trees estimated to be about 300 years old. The park is open all year round and entry is free.^[2]

The Humberg Tower is an observation tower on the Humberg hill, 425 metres high, to the south of the city of Kaiserslautern in southwest Germany.

The idea of building a tower on the Humberg (already in those days a favourite hill among the citizens of Kaiserslautern, for its view) was taken up in 1896. For this purpose, inhabitants of the city founded the Humberg Association, with the aim of financing the building of an observation tower. Among the founding members were the well-known sewing machine factory owner Pfaff, the mayor, Dr. Orth, distinguished businessmen, Pfeiffer and Karcher, and malt manufacturer, Gelbert.

The tower was built to plans by the Munich architect, Ludwig Ritter von Stempel, who had already made a name for himself with some public buildings in the city. The Humberg Tower is a monumental construction of sandstone blocks, typical of the Wilhelminian period. Building began in the spring of 1899. The building material was quarried on the spot from the stone plateau of the Humberg. The tower was ceremonially opened on 2 September 1900. The tower is 35.77 metres (119 feet) high and its observation platform is 28.16 metres (93 feet) above the ground. The spiral staircase inside has 130 steps; in addition, there are a further 33 steps in the outside stairs at the base.

In 1909, the existing Humberg Association was dissolved. The tower and the association's capital came into the possession of the city of Kaiserslautern. In 2001, the Humberg Tower Association of Kaiserslautern e.V. was founded with the aim of preserving the tower and its attractiveness as a goal for hikers.^[3]

Technical University of Kaiserslautern is a public research university in Kaiserslautern, Germany.

There are numerous institutes around the university, including two Fraunhofer Institutes (IESE and ITWM), the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI SWS), the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Institute for Composite Materials (IVW) and the Institute for Surface and Thin Film Analysis (IFOS), all of which cooperate closely with the university.

TU Kaiserslautern is organized into 12 faculties. Approximately 14,869 students are enrolled at the moment. The TU Kaiserslautern is part of the Software-Cluster along with the Technische Universität Darmstadt, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Saarland University. The Software-Cluster won the German government's Spitzencluster competition, the equivalence to the German Universities Excellence Initiative for clusters.^[8]