It is situated 30 km (19 mi) south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers.

[citation needed] Immediately north of the city lies the Schönbuch, a densely wooded nature park.

The geographical centre of the state of Baden-Württemberg is in a small forest called Elysium, near the Botanical Gardens of the city's university.

It became soon renowned as one of the most influential places of learning in the Holy Roman Empire, especially for theology (a Protestant faculty, Tübinger Stift, was established in 1535 in the former Augustinian monastery).

In 1798 the Allgemeine Zeitung, a leading newspaper in early 19th-century Germany, was founded in Tübingen by Johann Friedrich Cotta.

From the beginning of the 19th century, the town grew significantly beyond its medieval borders for the first time with the rectangular Wilhelmsvorstadt at the Neue Aula and the Botanical Garden.

In 1861, with the opening on the right bank of the Neckar of today's main train station, Tübingen was connected to the Royal Württemberg State Railways network.

[4]: 21–22  Today, the repurposed Hindenburg Barracks are at the centre of an award-winning mixed business-residential development, the "French Quarter" (Französische Viertel).

[6][4]: 19  The university became a leading centre for research on the "Jewish question", with faculty in both the sciences and humanities contributing to the notions of "racial hygiene" that informed the genocidal policies of the new regime.

[10] There were three bombing raids on the town during Second World War, but damage was comparatively slight: the Neckar Bridge and some 85 houses.

In the second half of the 20th century, Tübingen's administrative area was extended beyond what is now called the "core city" to include several outlying small towns and villages.

In the 1960s, Tübingen was one of the centres of the German student movement and of the protests of 1968,[13] which made an issue of perceived continuities between the Federal Republic and the Hitler regime.

[14] Emerging from this scene, in the early 1970s, a graduate of the university, Gudrun Ensslin, led her Red Army Faction in a nation-wide campaign of bombing and assassination.

Tübingen is best described as a mixture of old and distinguished academic flair, including liberal and green politics on one hand and traditional German-style student fraternities on the other, with rural-agricultural environs and shaped by typical Lutheran-Pietist characteristics, such as austerity and a Protestant work ethic, and traditional Swabian elements, such as frugality, order, and tidiness.

In 1995[update], the German weekly magazine Focus published a national survey, according to which Tübingen had the highest quality of life of all cities in Germany.

Factors taken into consideration included the infrastructure, the integration of bicycle lanes into the road system, a bus system connecting surrounding hills and valleys, late-night services, areas of the city that can be reached on foot, the pedestrianised old town, and other amenities and cultural events offered by the university.

[16] Tübingen's Altstadt (old town) survived World War II due to the city's lack of heavy industry.

The result is a growing domestic tourism business as visitors come to wander through one of the few completely intact historic Altstädte in Germany.

The highlights of Tübingen include its crooked cobblestone lanes, narrow-stair alleyways picking their way through the hilly terrain, streets lined with canals, and well-maintained traditional half-timbered houses.

Below the Rathaus is a quiet, residential street called the Judengasse, the former Jewish neighborhood of Tübingen until the city's Jews were expelled in 1477.

Students and tourists also come to the Neckar River in the summer to visit beer gardens or go boating in Stocherkähne, the Tübingen equivalent of Oxford and Cambridge punts, only slimmer.

There are several festivals, open air markets and other events on a regular basis: Since World War II, Tübingen's population has almost doubled from about 45,000 to the current 88,000, also due to the incorporation of formerly independent villages into the city in the 1970s.

Currently, Lord Mayor Boris Palmer (Green Party) has set the ambitious goal of increasing the population of Tübingen to 100,000 within the next several years.

A modern technology park is growing in the northern part of the city, where science, industrial companies and start-ups are conducting joint research, primarily on biotechnology and artificial intelligence.