Together with its northern neighbour-town Zella-Mehlis, Suhl forms the largest urban area in the Thuringian Forest with a population of 46,000.

The region around Suhl is marked by up to 1,000-meter-high mountains, including Thuringia's highest peak, the Großer Beerberg (983 m), approximately 5 kilometres (3 miles) NE of the city centre.

In 1952, Suhl became one of East Germany's 14 district capitals, which led to a government-directed period of urban growth and conversion.

Though first appearing in a 1318 deed, several entries in the annals of Fulda Abbey already mentioned a place named Sulaha between 900 and 1155 AD.

Suhl was located on an important trade route from Gotha, Erfurt and Arnstadt passing the Thuringian Forest mountain range at Oberhof and continuing to the Henneberg's residence, Schleusingen.

During the 16th century, iron mining and metalworking saw a boom, finished by the Thirty Years' War, when marauding Croat mercenaries under Imperial general Johann Ludwig Hektor von Isolani burnt down the city in 1634.

The Congress of Vienna in 1815 led to the Saxonian loss of Suhl, which became part of the Prussian Province of Saxony, where it remained from 1815 to 1944 and again shortly in 1945.

About 1920, Suhl has been a centre of left-wing revolutionary groups, so that the Reichswehr occupied the city (and the neighbour-town Zella-Mehlis) during the Kapp Putsch and ended the workers uprising.

The metal processing of Suhl naturally led, during the Renaissance, to other major local industries, including gunsmithing and armoring.

Although surpassed in this respect in the unified Germany by the Olympic shooting centre at Munich, Suhl remains an important place to the sport.

Suhl sits on the southern edge of the Suhler Scholle, an upthrust granite complex that is streaked by numerous dikes.

The higher hills to the northeast are part of the Beerberg Scholle, an irregularly cracked mass of quartz porphyry from the later Permian period.

The city centre developed during the Middle Ages around the Marktplatz and the Steinweg (as main street) next to the confluence of Lauter and Rimbach river.

A larger problem is vacancy in shops in the city centre, because the retail sector in Suhl has also been in a crisis for many years.

During the following decades, the industrial revolution in other German regions led to an economic crisis in Suhl, because of the bad traffic conditions for exporting products.

Compared to other upcoming cities in Germany, the growth of population stayed slight until 1935, as Suhl counted 15,000 inhabitants.

Then, the arm production for World War II brought an economic boom to Suhl and a growth of population up to 26,000 in 1940, which stayed the same until the early 1960s.

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

Urban planning activities to tear down unused flats led to a relatively low vacancy rate of 8% (according to 2011 EU census), compared with a loss in population of more than 35% since 1988.

Like other eastern German cities, Suhl has only a small amount of foreign population: around 1.5% are non-Germans by citizenship and overall 3.9% are migrants (according to 2011 EU census).

The first freely elected mayor after German reunification was Martin Kummer of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who served from 1990 to 2006.

The soil isn't very fertile and the climate is harsh, the most cultivated strains are maize and rapeseed, furthermore there is cattle farming on some areas.

In the past, the city was a leading arms producer in Germany and the vehicle production was another pillar of the local industry.

and some preserved administrative functions over the surrounding districts like the Industrie- und Handelskammer and the regional centres of Arbeitsagentur and Rentenversicherung.

It was one of only few main mountain railways in Prussia with the large, 3,039 metres (9,970 ft) long Brandleite Tunnel north of the city.

Public transport is carried out by a bus line network connecting the city centre with the outskirts, Zella-Mehlis and neighbouring villages.