Göppingen

Göppingen lies in the valley of the Fils, below the hills of Swabia. A royal charter of 1154 records the settlement, which grew into a town in the following decades. The counts of Württemberg acquired it in 1273 or 1274 and made it the seat of an administrative district. A mint operated here from 1396, and the sulphurous waters of its bath were already noted in 1404.

Duke Christoph enlarged the bath in 1557, giving it the name Christophsbad. The Thirty Years' War brought plunder and plague; almost 1,600 people died in 1634 and 1635 alone. In 1782 a great fire destroyed nearly the whole town. Duke Carl Eugen commissioned Johann Adam Groß the Younger to plan its rebuilding on a regular grid, and the new town hall was completed in 1785.