With its combination of rail, tram and bus services, the station is the main hub for public transport in the city and the district of Würzburg.

At the request of the Ministry of War, the station was built inside the city walls, despite the higher land acquisition costs, at the exact location of the Mainfranken Theater today.

The slightly elevated ground floor, as a result of the high position of the tracks, was clad with limestone and sandstone and included, among other things, waiting rooms and a restaurant.

This line (which is now part of the Treuchtlingen–Würzburg railway) was completed in 1864, giving Würzburg a shorter connection to the major cities of Augsburg and Munich.

It was built mainly at the request of Bavaria, to connect the then Bavarian Rhenish Palatinate to its own railway network and ran from Würzburg via Osterburken and Mosbach to Heidelberg.

To provide greater capacity for passenger services, it was planned initially to shift freight and shunting to a separate location.

A new district was then established in the immediate vicinity of the station and in place of the former city wall a ring of parks in the English style was created.

On the ground floor the entire front of the central hall was composed of arcade-like archways, which gave access to the inside of the station.

There were, in addition to a salon for the king, the usual facilities of a station at the time, such as waiting rooms for four classes, two restaurants, ticketing and baggage counter and several administrative offices.

The ruins of the Ludwig station were completely removed up to the early 1960s and today's Mainfranken Theater Würzburg was built in its place.

The northern side of the hall was adorned by an attached stone mosaic of the Eichstätt artist Alois Wünsche-Mitterecker that had a cross-sectional image of a class 44 steam locomotive at its original size.

As repeated vibrations caused by departing trains broke part of the wall panelling, the mosaic was removed in 1958 and installed in the Nuremberg Transport Museum.

In the summer of 2006, two new sales pavilions were established for this purpose and an older bakery was removed and the ServicePoint had to be moved to the side of the hall.

At the eastern end there was an office of the Bahnhofsmission charity, which provides assistance to travellers and the homeless; until the beginning of 2008, this has since been housed in the west wing of the building.

There have been repeated complaints in recent years regarding its cleanliness and hygiene to Deutsche Bahn, which notes, however, that a comprehensive renovation of the facility will be undertaken during the modernisation of the whole building.

The DB subsidiary Westfrankenbahn on its service to Bad Mergentheim partly uses new class 642 diesel multiple units, which are also not barrier-free despite their low floors, as their entrances are 55 cm (22 in) high, so that passengers have to step down.

At the same time it would be possible, with fully occupied platform tracks, for 750 m (2,460 ft) long freight trains take to pass through the rebuilt station.

Moreover, the traffic flows were designed so that trains would run at the entrance and exit largely without crossing paths and freight operations are concentrated on the south side of the station.

[16] The station forecourt extends from the entrance building to the Röntgenring and Haugerring on the inside of the ring of parks on the site of the former walls.

The St Kilian fountain stands on a pedestal in the middle of the forecourt, which was inaugurated in July 1895 by Prince Regent Luitpold and is the only existing remnant of the former station.

After Deutsche Bundesbahn gradually introduced its increasingly popular Intercity network with two-class trains from 1968, the first class only TEE services were phased out.

After delivery of further ICE sets from 31 March 1992, a second connection was established between Hamburg and Munich, which ran south of Fulda on a more easterly route through the northern Bavarian cities of Würzburg and Nuremberg.

After the integration of the Nuremberg–Ingolstadt high-speed railway in the nationwide long-distance network in December 2006, this route was received an hourly service and more coupled trains operated to various locations.

This division of departure platforms for trams to the inner city (west) and Grombühl (east) was established in 1996 as a "temporary" measure during the construction of a new station, which has not yet commenced.

Finally, in mid-2006, an architectural competition for the redevelopment of the station environment was started, which selected the Stuttgart office of Auer+Weber+Assoziierte and the Hamburg landscape architects, WES & Partner.

The proponents of the initiative warned of, despite the planned restoration of the bus station area to the ring park, impending gridlock and the desolation of the inner city after the opening of the proposed shopping centre.

At his initiative, a four-hour summit meeting was held on 12 March 2007 between the then Mayor of Würzburg, Pia Beckmann and the CEO of DB Station&Service, Wolf-Dieter Siebert.

To keep the city's contribution to a minimum, Mayor Pia Beckmann had brought a "stripped down" version to the discussion, which did not require the development of the second floor.

Despite their initial opposition, Deutsche Bahn finally accepted this proposal and also waived the requirement that the City fund €5 million of the cost.

Land there that is currently still owned by subsidiaries of Deutsche Bahn is required in return for the city's participation in the rebuilding of station.