Giessen

Giessen, written Gießen in German, is a university town in the central German state of Hesse. It is the seat of both the district and the administrative region that bear its name, and it lies on the river Lahn, which divides the built-up area into a western and an eastern half, roughly fifty kilometres north of Frankfurt am Main. The town has about 90,000 residents, and some 37,000 of them are students, which gives it a strongly academic character built around the University of Giessen. Its name goes back to a form first recorded in 1197 and refers to its position among several rivers, lakes and streams. The settlement grew from a moated castle raised in 1152, and it hosted the ninth Hessentag state festival in 1969.