It offers connections to the major German cities of Leipzig, Berlin, Augsburg, Ingolstadt, Munich, Würzburg, Frankfurt and Regensburg, as well as Linz and Vienna in Austria and Prague in the Czech Republic.
The Hauptbahnhof is located on the southeastern perimeter of Nuremberg's Altstadt, immediately opposite the Königstor (King's Gate) where the streets of Marientorgraben, Frauentorgraben, and Bahnhofstraße meet.
[needs update] West of another Hauptbahnhof in neighbouring Fürth the lines from Würzburg and Bamberg merge and then continue towards Nuremberg.
The Hauptbahnhof is located at the intersection of various Intercity-Express, InterCity and EuroCity routes and is the only long-distance station in Nuremberg.
Long-distance trains travel from here to Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, into the Rhine-Main and the Ruhrgebiet; to Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Bremen and Hamburg as well as Passau and Vienna.
Almost all long-distance trains travelling from Munich to the north of Germany run in combination to Nuremberg over the high-speed link and then divide up from here.
Local services using Regional-Express and Regionalbahn trains mainly serve the Nuremberg area, but also travel to other parts of Bavaria as well as Baden-Württemberg, Thuringia and into the Czech Republic to Prague.
The Munich-Nuremberg Express provides a fast local service between the two cities over the high-speed link to Ingolstadt and Munich, offering a cheaper alternative to the ICE.
The S-Bahn uses platforms 2 and 3 immediately next to the station building which significantly reduces changeover times to the city's public transport systems.
The subway stop is equipped with orange tiles on the walls, intended as signifying an important interchange station.
At weekends and on public holidays the station square is the meeting place and central changeover hub for the NightLiner night bus line network.
Numerous electronic signboards in the halls and on the platforms inform passengers about the latest traffic situation, and recorded announcements are played automatically.
On Christmas Eve and Maundy Thursday a service with live music is held in the central hall on the 1st floor.
Numerous businesses for everyday requirements occupy about 20,000 square metres of floor in the station building; these include shops selling travel items, restaurants and fast-food outlets.
After the removal of these unfavourably sited, old signal boxes, which were not capable of expansion, five groups of storage sidings could be merged into one.
Between 1844 and 1847 Nürnberg Hauptbahnhof appeared in its present location during the construction of the state-owned Ludwig South-North Railway from Lindau to Hof.
The Ostbahn company built its own terminus in 1859 during the construction of the line to Hersbruck, east of the existing one, which was linked in 1876 with the western one by a through station.
Rising demand for railway traffic during the 1880s and the ever-growing number of tracks made the construction of the subways, which are still there today, necessary.
Gradually the various underpasses - the Tafelfeld, Karl-Bröger, Marien and Dürrenhof tunnels as well as the Celtis and Allersberg subways were built.
As a result of allied bombing at the end of the Second World War the station building, with the exception of the Jugendstil lounge suffered heavily and on 16 March 1945 had to be closed for nine years.
In summer 1988 major building work began to construct the main route of the Nuremberg S-Bahn in the area of the Hauptbahnhof.
By using these platforms closer to the city the distance passengers had to walk between tramway, U-Bahn and Bus was significantly reduced.
[16] The rebuilding of the eastern track system, carried out in eight stages, cost around 100 million D-Marks and was paid for by the Government, the state of Bavaria and the city of Nuremberg.
Amongst other things, 16 kilometres of track and 60 points covering an area of 156,000 square metres were relaid, and two new fans of storage sidings (totalling 5.7 km) controlled by a shunting signal box were built.