Rastatt is a Baroque residence town in western Baden-Württemberg, set between the river Rhine and the foothills of the Black Forest, just south of Karlsruhe and a short hop from Baden-Baden and Strasbourg.
The town grew around the Residenzschloss built for Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm of Baden from 1700 — the earliest Baroque palace on the Upper Rhine — and the enchanting Schloss Favorite, Germany's oldest surviving 'porcelain palace'. Rastatt also holds an important place in German democratic history as the site of the 1849 revolution. It has a population of about 50,000 people.