Ettlingen

The story of Ettlingen

Ettlingen lies at the northern edge of the Black Forest on the Upper Rhine Plain, about 8 km south of Karlsruhe, on the River Alb. The area was a Roman crossroads in the province of Germania Superior, and finds include the Neptune Stone and a Roman bath beneath St. Martin's Church.

The town appears as Ediningom in a donation deed to Weissenburg Abbey in 788. In 965 Emperor Otto the Great granted the village market rights. Margrave Herman V of Baden-Baden became feudal lord in 1219, and Ettlingen developed into an administrative centre of the Margraviate of Baden-Baden.

Troops of Louis XIV nearly burned the town down during the Nine Years' War, and it was rebuilt in the following decades. A battle took place there in 1796. The Baroque courtyard of Ettlingen Palace has hosted the Schlossfestspiele open-air theatre since 1979.

The town had about 38,578 residents at the end of 2024.

Falconry in Ettlingen

Ettlingen hosts the Internationale Falknertagung 2026, the International Falconry Meeting of the Deutscher Falkenorden e.V. (Bund für Falknerei, Greifvogelschutz und Greifvogelkunde), scheduled for 21 to 25 October 2026. The meeting is biannual and brings together falconers from Germany and abroad.

Participants hunt with their birds of prey, exchange experience and attend lectures and workshops, and a programme is published on the association's website.

The event is listed on UNESCO's intangible heritage website among activities supporting the International Day of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 2026. Germany is one of the 24 states in the UNESCO inscription of falconry as a living human heritage.