Bavarian Swabia

Swabia is often likened to the kind of colorful patchwork rug produced by the local weavers. This is not only because of the sheer variety of regions owned by princes, counts, monasteries and knights that determined the political situation here for centuries, but also because of the numerous different landscapes and stretches of this area of Germany, which is bounded geographically by the Iller and Lech rivers and Lake Constance.

Swabia has no real geographical-historical unity. Its present-day geographical confines are far more the result of historical developments and political and administrative decisions that were made without taking its geographical and linguistic borders into account. The longest section, from south to north, is roughly 200 kilometers, and it is approximately 50 kilometers from west to east. With a surface area of around 10, 000 square meters Swabia is the third-largest administrative division of Bavaria, and in population terms (roughly 1.78 million) the second largest after Upper Bavaria. Apart from four towns administrated as districts in their own rights – (Augsburg, Kaufbeuren, Kempten and Memmingen), there are 334 parishes in 10 districts and 3 planning regions.

The interrelations of nature, man, space and time has created a complex system of cultural landscapes in which farms, meadows, villages, towns, castles and monasteries and just as important as streets, shopping centers or sports facilities. Each cultural landscape is an archive of industrial development as well as a storehouse of the cultural achievements of numerous generations throughout the centuries.