The city is the cultural and economic centre of the Rhine-Neckar, Germany's seventh-largest metropolitan region, with nearly 2.4 million inhabitants.

[5] Mannheim is located at the confluence of the Upper Rhine and the Neckar in the Kurpfalz (Electoral Palatinate) region of northwestern Baden-Württemberg.

Mannheim forms a continuous urban zone of around 500,000 inhabitants with Ludwigshafen am Rhein in the Rhineland-Palatinate, while some northern suburbs lie in Hesse.

It was the former home of the Prince-elector of the Electoral Palatinate, and now houses the University of Mannheim, which repeatedly receives top marks in business administration and is sometimes known as the "Harvard of Germany".

[14][15][16] The city is the starting and finishing point of the Bertha Benz Memorial Route, which follows the tracks of the first long-distance automobile trip in history.

The city is home to many factories, offices and headquarters of several major corporations such as Roche, ABB, IBM, Siemens, Unilever and more.

[23] A brick kiln excavated in 1929 in the Seckenheim district, which operated from 74 AD to the early second century, attests to settlement in Roman times.

[24] The name of the city was first recorded as Mannenheim in a legal transaction in 766, surviving in a twelfth-century copy in the Codex Laureshamensis from Lorsch Abbey.

In 1606, Frederick IV, Elector Palatine started building the fortress of Friedrichsburg and the adjacent city centre with its grid of streets and avenues.

Infrastructure improvements included the establishment of Rhine Harbour in 1828 and the construction of the first Baden railway, which opened from Mannheim to Heidelberg in 1840.

The precedent was set for this attack by Germany's repeated air raids against British civilian populations throughout southeastern Britain during the first half of 1915.

After the First World War, the Heinrich Lanz Company built the Bulldog, an advanced tractor, powered by heavy oil.

As a result of the invention of the pre-combustion chamber by Prosper L'Orange, Benz & Cie. developed the world's first compact diesel-powered car at its motor works in Mannheim in 1923.

Some sources state that the first deliberate strategic bombing of the war occurred at Mannheim during a Royal Air Force night raid on 16 December 1940.

[30] In late March 1945, the Allied ground advance into Germany reached Mannheim, which was potentially well-defended by German forces.

Mannheim Palace and the water tower (Wasserturm) eventually were rebuilt and the National Theatre was replaced by a new building at a new location.

A prime example of the current trend is the construction of the Victoria Tower (Victoria-Turm) in 2001, one of the tallest buildings in the city, on railway land.

In preparation for the anniversary, some urban activities were implemented, beginning in 2000: the building of the SAP Arena with access to the city's new eastern ring road, the rehabilitation of the pedestrian zone in Breite Straße, the arsenal and the palace, the complete transformation of the old fairground, and the new Schafweide tram line.

Its location near the Rhine and Neckar rivers spurred Mannheim's industrialization and transition into a major city in the early 19th century.

The city was heavily damaged during WWII but soon regained prominence as an industrial centre, causing rapid population growth in the 1950s.

Many motor, electronic and power plant companies came to Mannheim and other cities in the Rhine-Neckar Region, including Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg, which lies just kilometres up the Neckar.

Situated in Mannheim Palace, it is Germany's leading university in the fields of business and economics and attracts students from around the world.

The most recent city council election was held on 9 June 2024, and the results were as follows: A number of U.S. Army Europe installations were located in and near Mannheim during the Cold War.

[72] Additionally, the city also hosts large factories, headquarters and/or offices of ABB,[73] IBM,[74] Alstom,[75][76] BASF (Ludwigshafen), Bilfinger Berger,[77] Reckitt Benckiser, Unilever,[78] Essity,[79] Phoenix Group,[80] Bombardier,[81] Pepperl+Fuchs,[82] Caterpillar, Fuchs Petrolub, John Deere, Siemens,[83] SCA, Südzucker, and other companies.

The Mannheim/Ludwigshafen area is surrounded by a ring of motorways connecting it to Frankfurt in the north, Karlsruhe in the south, Saarbrücken in the west and Nuremberg in the east.

Mannheim Hauptbahnhof (central station) is at the end of the Mannheim-Stuttgart high-speed rail line and is the most important railway junction in southwestern Germany.

The RheinNeckar S-Bahn, established in 2003, connects most of the Rhine-Neckar area, including lines into the Palatinate, Odenwald and southern Hesse.

[89] Interurban trams are operated by RNV on a triangular route between Mannheim, Heidelberg, and Weinheim that was originally established by the Upper Rhine Railway Company (Oberrheinische Eisenbahn, OEG), and the company also operates interurban trams between Bad Dürkheim, Ludwigshafen, and Mannheim.

In the 1970s a proposal to build a U-Bahn out of the Mannheim and Ludwigshafen tramways was begun, but only small sections were built due to lack of funds.

House numbers begin on the south corner nearest Breite Straße and go counterclockwise for A-K and clockwise for L-U.