Freudenstadt sits at around 730 metres in the Northern Black Forest, and its name — "city of joy" — was chosen by Duke Frederick I of Württemberg when he founded the town in 1599. The centrepiece is the Marktplatz, at nearly five hectares the largest enclosed market square in Germany, ringed by Renaissance arcades and anchored by a Lutheran church whose two wings meet at a right angle — a curiosity of Protestant architecture that dates to the same founding moment as the square itself.
The town you see today is largely a post-war creation. In April 1945, with the war effectively lost, French troops spent sixteen hours bombarding Freudenstadt — a Wehrmacht command had been located nearby and the town carried particular symbolic weight in France. Ninety-five percent of the city centre was destroyed. Reconstruction was complete within five years, an achievement still known locally as the "Miracle of Freudenstadt." The arcades and the broad, airy square they surround are the result of that rebuilding: less quaint than a medieval town centre, but more coherent and liveable than most post-war German cities managed.
The real draw is the surrounding landscape. Freudenstadt sits at the edge of the Parkwald, a nature preserve riddled with walking trails, and the Friedrichsturm on the Kienberg gives the easiest viewpoint above town. The town serves as a convenient base for the Schwarzwald Hochstrasse — the Black Forest High Road that runs 60 kilometres north to Baden-Baden through forests and past the Mummelsee and the high moors of the Hornisgrinde. Closer in, the Sankenbach Waterfalls above Baiersbronn and the spa quarter of Lauterbad are easy half-day trips. Hikers, skiers, and people who simply want to breathe cold air and sleep well have been coming here for over a century. The spa designation is genuine: the altitude and the forests do make a difference.
It is a practical, unpretentious town. Come for the landscape and the hiking, use the market square as your orientation point, and head into the forest as soon as you can.