Kaiserslautern is a city in southwest Germany, located in the Bundesland of Rhineland-Palatinate at the edge of the Palatinate Forest. The historic centre dates to the 9th century, it is 459 kilometres from Paris, 117 km from Frankfurt am Main, 159 km from Luxembourg. Kaiserslautern is home to about 100,000 people. Additionally 45,000 NATO military personnel inhabit the city and its surrounding district, contribute US$1 billion annually to the local economy; the city is home to football club 1. FC Kaiserslautern that has won the German championship four times. Prehistoric settlement in the area of what is now Kaiserslautern has been traced to at least 800 BC; some 2,500-year-old Celtic tombs were uncovered at Miesau, a town about 29 kilometres west of Kaiserslautern. The recovered relics are now in the Museum for Palatinate History at Speyer. Kaiserslautern received its name from the favorite hunting retreat of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa who ruled the Holy Roman Empire from 1155 until 1190.

The small river Lauter made the old section of Kaiserslautern an island in medieval times. Ruins of Frederick's original castle, built 1152–1160, can still be seen in front of the Rathaus. A second castle, Nanstein Castle, was built at Landstuhl to guard the western approach to the city. Barbarossa's influence on Kaiserslautern remains today, both in its nickname as a "Barbarossa city" and the open-mouthed pike on the city's coat of arms his favorite dish; the Stiftkirche, Kaiserslautern's oldest church, was constructed in 1250–1350. As the population of Kaiserslautern grew, King Rudolf von Habsburg chartered the town in 1276. St. Martin's Kirche was built from 1300–1350 for an order of monks. Today a section of the original city wall still stands in the courtyard of the church. In 1375, the city of Kaiserslautern was pledged to Electoral Palatinate and therefore became subsequently part of the Wittelsbach inheritance. In 1519, Franz von Sickingen became the owner of Nanstein Castle, he became a Protestant, in 1522 Nanstein was a stronghold for local nobles favouring the Reformation.

Sickingen and the local nobles began their battle against the Archbishop of Trier. Nanstein was besieged by cannon-armed German Catholic princes. Sickingen died after the castle surrendered, the Protestant nobility of the Electoral Palatinate were subdued by the Catholic princes. Count of the Electoral Palatinate Johann Casimir, came to Kaiserslautern during the Thirty Years' War. Spanish occupation in 1621–1632 ended when Protestant Swedish armies liberated the area. In 1635, Croatian troops of the Austrian emperor's army entered Kaiserslautern and killed 3,000 of the 3,200 residents in three days' plundering. Landstuhl was saved from a similar fate by surrendering without a fight, it took Kaiserslautern about 160 years to repopulate itself. Conflict did not end with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648; the Elector of the Pfalz had difficulty with many of his subjects and ordered all castles, including Nanstein, destroyed. The French invaded and occupied the area, residing in Kaiserslautern in 1686–1697.

After the treaty of Utrecht it was restored to be part of the Palatinate. During the unquiet episodes in the 18th century, the Palatinate was the scene of fighting between French and German troops of different states. In 1713, the French destroyed the city's wall towers. From 1793 until Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the area was under French administration; as French power declined after 1815, Kaiserslautern and the Palatinate became a Bavarian province and remained so until 1918. After World War I, French troops again occupied the Palatinate for several years. In World War II, Allied bombing destroyed more than 85% of Kaiserslautern; the railway and several main roads were primary targets, with the heaviest attacks occurring on 7 January, 11 August, 28 September 1944. On 20 March 1945, as the last of the 1st Army crossed the Rhine at Remagen, the U. S. 80th Division, 319th Infantry, part of the 3rd US Army, seized Kaiserslautern without resistance. Little reconstruction took place until the currency reform of 1948.

The pace of the economy remained slow until 1952, when construction for newly established garrisons of American troops brought economic growth to the area. On March 20, 1945, the city was captured by the Americans; the city became part of the French occupation zone after the Second World War. The establishment of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate was ordered on August 30, 1946 as the last state in the western occupation zones by ordinance No. 57 of the French military government under General Marie-Pierre Kœnig. Unexploded ordnance from WWII continues to be discovered around Kaiserslautern. In May 2012 an unexploded 250-pound Allied bomb was found and covered by water pipe, during a construction project in the downtown area of the city. On 5 September 2013, another WWII bomb was found during construction near the train station in Enkenbach-Alsenborn. Stripes article on another found in Einseidlerhof, suburb of Kaiserslautern in 2017, one of five discovered that year: https://www.stripes.com/news/mushroom-hunter-finds-wwii-era-bomb-near-ramstein-air-base-1.494177 Road closures in October 2019 to defuse unexploded ordinace form WWII. https://www.stripes.com/news/europe/part-of-autobahn-near-us-bases-in-kaiserslautern-area-to-close-while-wwii-bomb-disarmed-1.605200 This excerpt from the Kaiserslautern City website de

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