Historic pentagon
Wiesbaden-Mitte is the perfect balance of living, learning, working, enjoying and shopping - or, to put it in a nutshell: Here you can live in colorful diversity.
Nowhere else is the multifaceted richness of Wiesbaden as present as in the Mitte district, where a multitude of sights can be found. The 26 hot thermal springs in the city center, which helped Wiesbaden to be discovered by the Romans and enabled it to become a world spa town, are still omnipresent in the city center today. The density of sights at the Historic Pentagon in Wiesbaden-Mitte is no coincidence, but is based on the general development plan by Christian Zais, after whom a hall in the Kurhaus is named.
Old town
It is not known who first had the idea of naming Wiesbaden's old town "Schiffchen". However, it can be assumed that whoever came up with the name had a city map in their hand: the two streets between Marktstraße and Goldgasse, which diverge and then rejoin at an angle, are indeed reminiscent of the shape of a little ship: Grabenstraße and Wagemannstraße.
There are many good reasons to take a stroll through this quarter. Firstly, the historic facades, the narrow winding alleyways - nowhere else in Wiesbaden can you find more of an old town feeling. For example, the oldest house in the city center is located here (Wagemannstraße 7); it dates back to 1728, when the whole of Wiesbaden was rebuilt after various city fires and the Thirty Years' War. In the 1960s, when crooked, small half-timbered houses were not in vogue, the little ship was almost leveled and replaced by a parking lot for the car-friendly "New Wiesbaden".
Today, however, these very houses provide further reasons for a stroll through the Schiffchen. Large international chains have never settled in the small areas. While the old town was once the quarter of craftsmen and traders, today it is the quarter of owner-managed stores, cafés and restaurants.