Schwarzwaldhochstraße driving road map

by Sidney van den Boogaard

Opened in 1932 and regarded as Germany's first holiday route, the Schwarzwaldhochstraße was built around a simple idea: driving for its own sake. From Baden-Baden the B 500 climbs onto the crest of the Black Forest and stays there for some sixty kilometres, between 800 and 1,000 metres up. Broad, flowing curves alternate with views over the Rhine plain. On the way you pass the Mummelsee, a round ice-age lake below the Hornisgrinde, and around Ruhestein you cross the Black Forest National Park before rolling down to Freudenstadt. For the study of anyone who loves long lines and the scent of pine.

This work is part of the Petrolhead Roads collection: the world's finest driving and riding roads, from coastal routes and mountain roads to legendary ribbons of curves. Each road is drawn from the real route and finished in the same calm, graphic style, with the elevation profile and, along the bottom, the length, the road number and the facts that made the road famous.

The road is drawn from OpenStreetMap data (© OpenStreetMap contributors) and the profile from Copernicus elevation data. A great gift for anyone who would rather drive a great road than the motorway.