Strasbourg is particularly known for being the seat of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights. Together with Brussels, it is the seat of the European Parliament. It is a university city and a center of the motor, food, textile and machine building industries. The oldest part of the city, la Petite France, is located where the Ill splits in two around the center. It is the most touristic part of the city. Originally, German-Alsatian was mainly spoken in Strasbourg. However, due to the progressive Frenchification after 1918 and especially after 1945, French increasingly became the official language rather than German. German is no longer a means of public communication. The municipality had 290,576 inhabitants on January 1, 2020.[1] The agglomeration around Strasbourg had 1,145,000 inhabitants in 2007. In 2015, the French part of the agglomeration had 780,515 inhabitants.

At the time of its first settlement, the Strasbourg area was intersected several times by the tributaries of the Rhine, Ill and Breusch. Just like the Triboci, they already had the earlier about 50 BC. Celts displaced themselves in this delta because of the rich hunting and fishing. For the Romans, the location of this fishing village, as well as the easy Rhine crossing on site, offered excellent conditions for establishing an army base. Under the Roman emperor Augustus in 12 BC. Argentoratum, silver mountain, founded. Initially it was a military camp of the Eighth Legion near the Roman-Germanic border, the limes, which was built in this area by the Rhine. In time, a civilian settlement, a canabae, sprang up west of the camp. Due to the expansion of the Roman Empire, the border shifted to the east and Argentoratum could become an important port city on the Rhine. This expansion was temporary; as early as 357, the Rhine border was also threatened. In that year, Julianus Apostata maintained this border for the time being through his victory in the battle of Argentoratum against the seven chieftains of the Alemanni. But after half a century, Alsace was definitively taken over by this Germanic tribe. The originally Celtic inhabitants and the Romans were expelled or adapted. During the invasion of the Huns under Attila in the spring of 451, the Roman city was destroyed. On the site of the old Roman fortress, the Frankish-Allemanian city with the name of Strasbourg, latinized in documents as Strateburgum, "fortress by the street" arose. Since the 4th century, the city was a bishop's seat. In 496 the city was incorporated into the Frankish Empire. In 842, the Strasbourg Oath was taken between Louis the German and Charles the Bald. This document, which was drawn up in both Old French and Old High German, is therefore the first charter to be drawn up in "vernacular". The French version is therefore also the first written expression of the French language and the first document that bears witness to the division of the Frankish Empire into a Romance and Germanic speaking area. Through the Treaty of Meerssen, Strasbourg became East Frankish in 870 and part of the Duchy of Swabia, which in turn would become part of the later Holy Roman Empire. In 982 the bishops managed to separate the city from the duchy and bring it under the rule of the diocese.

Strasbourg's area was 78.26 square kilometers on January 1, 2020; the population density was then 3,713 inhabitants per km². The map below shows the location of Strasbourg with its main infrastructure and neighboring municipalities.