In 1180, Gotha was first mentioned as a city, when the area between Brühl and Jüdenstraße became the core of urban development, highlighting the early presence of Jews in this old trading town.

Until 1665, the bourse of Gotha was located in the centre of Hauptmarkt square inside the Renaissance building, which hosts the town hall today.

This channel, over 25 kilometres long, brought fresh water from the Thuringian Forest (Hörsel and Apfelstädt rivers) to the city.

[4]: 74 The turnaround was brought about by the selection of Gotha as a ducal residence in the 1640 territorial partition, when Ernest the Pious founded the duchy of Saxe-Gotha.

The strongly Protestant and absolutist sovereign quickly began to reorganize his small state (even before the war had ended) and in particular fostered the school system, for example by introducing compulsory education up to the age of 12 in 1642.

His book Der teutsche Fürstenstaat (1656), written by order of Ernest, served for decades as a standard work in teaching political science at Protestant universities in Germany.

In 1774, the actor group led by Conrad (or Konrad) Ekhof, called "the father of German acting", came from Weimar to Gotha.

Under the rule of Duke Ernest II, Gotha was a centre of Germany's liberal movement, where the Gothaer Nachparlament, an aftermath of 1848 German Revolution took place.

After 1851, Gustav Freytag, novelist, advocate of German unity and often a harsh critic of Otto von Bismarck made Siebleben (today part of Gotha) his summer home.

Ernest II made Freytag Hofrat (privy councillor) in 1854, when the Prussian government had issued a warrant for his arrest.

From 1876 to 1908, the novelist Kurd Lasswitz, sometimes referred to as "the father of German science fiction" worked as a teacher at Gotha's Ernestinum, the oldest Gymnasium in Thuringia.

A far-left government was elected in Gotha in 1919 and worked against both the Weimar National Assembly and the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch in 1920 bringing the city to the edge of a civil war.

Under Nazi rule, Gotha became a centre of the arms industry with nearly 7,000 forced labourers working in the city's factories, where more than 200 died.

Jewish slave laborers working in quarries at Gotha were all murdered by their Nazi overseers on 4 April 1945, just before the city was captured by American forces.

[5] The American Army reached the city in April 1945 but was replaced by the Soviets in July 1945 and in 1949 Gotha became part of the GDR.

During this period, some historic inner-city quarters were replaced by Plattenbau buildings, especially west of the Hauptmarkt and at Gartenstraße north of the city centre.

Many other buildings fell derelict during the later GDR period and the city's time of shrinking in the 1990s, whereas others were refurbished after German reunification in 1990.

The city itself lies at an elevation of 300 m and the municipal territory is nearly free of forest (with the two named mountains as exceptions) and is in intensive agricultural use.

As one out of only very few ancient cities in Germany, Gotha is not situated on a river, so that water supply was already a problem in the Middle Ages.

During the 1990s and the early 2000s, many inhabitants left Gotha to search for a better life in west Germany or other major east German cities like Jena or Erfurt.

[6] Today, the birth deficit, caused by the high average age of the population, is becoming a bigger problem because immigration is not sufficient to compensate for it in recent years.

[7] The most important regions of origin of Gotha migrants are bordering rural areas of Thuringia as well as foreign countries like Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.

Like other eastern German cities, foreigners account for only a small share of Gotha's population: circa 2.5% are non-Germans by citizenship and overall 7.1% are classified as migrants (according to the 2011 EU census).

Further, the neighbouring small towns of Waltershausen and Ohrdruf have strong industrial cores, where many commuters from Gotha have found work.

The city centre hosts some retailing and at the south-western periphery the largest hospital of the region was built after reunification.

The local trains to Eisenach in the west, Halle in the east (via Erfurt and Weimar) and Bad Langensalza in the north depart once an hour.

Important secondary roads lead from Gotha to Bad Tennstedt in the north-east, to Arnstadt in the south-east, to Waltershausen in the south-west and to Goldbach in the north-west.

The Erfurt-Weimar Airport is situated 20 kilometres east of Gotha and in use for holiday flights to southern European tourist destinations.

It connects points of touristic interest along the medieval Via Regia from Eisenach via Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar and Jena to Altenburg.

A peculiarity is the 22 km (14 mi) long Thüringerwaldbahn [de] (established in 1929), one of Germany's last traditional interurban tramway lines, to Bad Tabarz, Waltershausen and Friedrichroda.