Stuttgart Central Station (Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof) is a railway station in the city of Stuttgart, the capital of the Land (state) of Baden-Württemberg, in southwestern Germany. It is the largest regional and long-distance railway station in Stuttgart, the main node of the Stuttgart S-Bahn network, and, together with the halt at Charlottenplatz, the main node of the Stuttgart Stadtbahn.
Located at the northeastern end of the Königstraße, the main pedestrian zone of the city centre, the main line station is a terminus, whilst the subterranean S-Bahn and Stadtbahn stations are through stations. The station is well known for its 12-storey tower with a large, rotating and illuminated Mercedes-Benz star insignia on top; the tower and station building are city landmarks.
Plans for the controversial Stuttgart 21 project to convert the main line terminus station into an underground through station include the demolition of the side wings of the building, together with the elimination of the platforms, tracks, and apron of the terminus station. The planned underground through station is configured at a 90 degree angle to the present station. Construction is scheduled from 2010 to 2019.
In November 2009, preservationists of the International Council on Monuments and Sites nominated the building for inclusion in UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage list, an occasion that opponents of the Stuttgart 21 project picked to urge the city and Deutsche Bahn to stop the project which implies demolition of parts of the complex designed by Paul Bonatz.
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Famous quotes containing the words central station, central and/or station:
“There is no such thing as a free lunch.”
—Anonymous.
An axiom from economics popular in the 1960s, the words have no known source, though have been dated to the 1840s, when they were used in saloons where snacks were offered to customers. Ascribed to an Italian immigrant outside Grand Central Station, New York, in Alistair Cooke’s America (epilogue, 1973)
“But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking?—the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world—a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
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—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)