Bayerisches Landesportal: The State of Bavaria

The State of Bavaria

Regensburg

© Bayern Tourismus

Bavaria is the state at the heart of Europe. The major European transport routes between East and West and between North and South intersect between the Alps and the Rhön, between the Main and the Danube. Near the town of Waldsassen in the Upper Palatinate you can still see the stone placed there by Napoleon to mark the centre of Europe. Following the fall of the Iron Curtain, Bavaria has once again become the gateway to the neighbouring countries in eastern and south-eastern Europe and an important link between the old and the new countries of the EU. If you are looking for the centre of Europe, you will find it in Bavaria.

Its neighbours are the states of Baden-Württemberg and Hesse in the west and north-west, Thuringia and Saxony in the north, the Czech Republic in the east, and Austria in the south. The border of Bavaria is 2,705 kilometres long, about the same as the distance between Munich and Moscow.

Bavaria is the largest state in the Federal Republic of Germany. More than twelve million people live and work in its more than 70,000 square kilometres. Bavaria is bigger than Switzerland and has more inhabitants than Sweden. And Bavaria is growing. More than one million people have moved to Bavaria from the rest of Germany, more than to any other federal state.

Bavaria is a country of great diversity. It combines untouched nature and vibrant life. Bavaria's appearance is characterised by the impressive panorama of the Alps with Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspitze, and by the romantic rocky scenery of the area known as ‘Franconian Switzerland', just as much as by the extensive river landscapes around the Main and the Danube and by the Upper Bavarian lakes, the Chiemsee, Tegernsee, Königssee, Ammersee and Lake Starnberg.

The two European urban conglomerations of Munich and Nuremberg together with other big cities such as Augsburg, Würzburg, Regensburg and Ingolstadt are booming centres of business and industry and world-famous cultural centres. Along the "Romantische Strasse, the so-called ‘Romantic Road Route' from Füssen toWürzburg, the mediaeval character of towns like Dinkelsbühl and Rothenburg ob der Tauber have survived unaltered down through the centuries. And in the countryside the ancient structures of the village communities are still intact. From every perspective Bavaria presents different facets to the world.

The Bavarian countryside is characterised by its great diversity, consisting as it does of four major natural areas: the Bavarian Alps, the foothills of the Alpine region, the central massif in Eastern Bavaria, and the stratified region in Swabia and Franconia.

Cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants in Bavaria with the number of inhabitants

Population and area compared