Aalen Travel Guide
A detailed destination guide for your next Germany vacation
Aalen Overview
Aalen is a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is the seat of the Ostalbkreis district, and its largest town.
Aalen is situated on the upper reaches of the river Kocher, at the foot of the Swabian Alb to the south and south east and close to the hilly landscape of the Ellwanger Berge to the north. The Aal is a small river stretching only on the town's territory. Aalen is at about 70 kilometres east of Stuttgart (Stuttgart vacation rentals | Stuttgart travel guide) and 48 kilometres (30 miles) north of Ulm (Ulm vacation rentals | Ulm travel guide).
Where to stay in Aalen?
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Things to See in Aalen
The Scholz Arena is the home stadium of the VfR Aalen football club. Aalen's wrestling team KSV Aalen is one of the top clubs in all of Germany, so is the wrestling division of the TSV Dewangen, resident in Aalen's borough of Dewangen.
Windpark Waldhausen began operating in early 2007. It consists of seven REpower MM92 wind turbines with a nameplate capacity of 2 MW each. The hub height of each wind turbine is 100 metres (330 ft), with a rotor diameter of 92 metres (300 ft).
Aalen is a health resort, with the Limes-Thermen (German: “Limes Thermae”) hot springs. The Tiefer Stollen mine, where ore was once mined for the iron works in Wasseralfingen, now offers therapy for asthma and has a mining museum open for visitors. A mine railway takes visitors deep into the Braunenberg mountain.
St. Nicholaus church
[ source: wikipedia ]
Maps and Driving Directions to Aalen
Aalen is located directly on the Autobahn A7 and is also well connected to the network of federal roads (Bundesstraßen). The Aalen train station is a regional railway hub, with InterCity trains running Karlsruhe–Stuttgart–Aalen–Nürnberg, and regional trains connecting with Stuttgart, Ulm, Crailsheim and Donauwörth. The local bus system is of high quality; its double-decker buses are among the few in use in Germany.
Stadt Aalen
[ source: Flickr]
Related Sites
We collected some useful links related to Aalen. If you know a few more sites not listed here, or also know some insider tips or point of interests for this destination? Please share and submit your Germany travel tip. If approved it will be shown on this page!
- Homepage of Aalen: Aalen (official home page)
- Wikipedia: Aalen
- Kocher Jagst bike trail
- Limesmuseum
More about the History of Aalen
From about 150 / 160 AD a Roman fort housed the cavalry unit Ala II Flavia milliaria at the site of present-day Aalen. The location was strategically important at the time, in the direct vicinity of the Rhaetian Limes. The unit being 1000 soldiers strong, the fort was the greatest fort of auxiliaries along the border to unoccupied Germania. A civilian settlement was adjacent on the south and the east. Around 260, the Romans gave up the fort as they withdrew their frontier to Germania back to the Rhine and Danube rivers, and the Alamanni took over the region. It has been suggested that the name of Aalen traces back to the Roman fort, but this was disproved by later research.
The first time Aalen was mentioned in the Middle Ages was in an inventory list of Ellwangen (Ellwangen vacation rentals | Ellwangen travel guide), dated ca. 1136, as the village Alon. Aalen was probably granted town privileges in the 13th century, though it is not certain whether by the Staufians or by the counts of Oettingen. It was first mentioned in written records in the 14th century when it was subject to the counts of Oettingen. Aalen was an Imperial City (often misreferred to as Imperial Free City) from 1360 to 1803, when it was annexed to Württemberg. It suffered a severe fire in 1634. It then became the seat of an Oberamt from which the district (Kreis) Aalen emerged in 1938. The latter merged with the district of Schwäbisch Gmünd (Schwäbisch Gmünd vacation rentals | Schwäbisch Gmünd travel guide) to the newly formed Ostalbkreis in 1973, though Aalen remained the district seat. In 1975, Wasseralfingen, a town with a third of the population of Aalen, was merged into Aalen.
[ source: wikipedia ]
What makes this Live Like a German Aalen Travel Guide special...
This Aalen travel guide provides you with an overview of Aalen, Aalen pictures, and a local travel guide that suggests many special trips, unique activities, and vacation ideas, that you can't find in a typical Germany travel guide.
Some of this information is compiled from popular and well-known sources (e.g., such as Wikipedia, Wikitravel, and great pictures from Flickr). However, what makes this Germany travel guide special is that most of the travel suggestions and insider tips are provided by local residents, property owners, and our readers, who share and submit their travel tips with us. All submissions are then editorially reviewed to ensure high quality. All this information is logically organized within this destination guide to make it easy for you to find things quickly.
In addition, the Aalen destination guide features restaurant recommendations, restaurant reviews, where to go for grocery shopping, sports activities, getting around, cultural events and highlights, entertainment, and health related information - so you are informed for your travel to Germany, and you can learn about all the cool things you can do during your Germany vacation!
