DARMSTADT, a city of Germany, capital of the Land of Hesse-Darmstadt, on a plain gently sloping from the Oden wald to the Rhine, 21 m. by rail S.E. from Mainz and 17 m. S. from Frankfort-on-Main. Pop. Darmstadt is mentioned in the 11th century, but in the 14th century it was still a village, held by the counts of Katzeneln bogen. It came by marriage into the possession of the house of Hesse in 1479, the male line of the house of Katzenelnbogen having in that year become extinct. The imperial army took it in the Schmalkaldic War, and destroyed the old castle. In 1567, after the death of Philip the Magnanimous, his youngest son George received Darmstadt and chose it as his residence. He was the founder of the line of Hesse-Darmstadt. Its most brilliant days were those of the reign of Louis X. (179o-183o), the first grand-duke, under whom the new town was built.
Darmstadt consists of an old and a new town, the streets of the former being narrow. In the new town is the stately Luisen platz, on which are the house of parliament, the old palace and the post office, and, in the centre, a statue of the grand-duke Louis I., the founder of the new town. The ducal palace is a complex of buildings of various centuries. Adjoining the palace gardens, are the theatre and armoury, and a little farther west the museum, a library of 600,000 volumes and 4,000 mss., a museum of Egyp tian and German antiquities, a picture gallery with masterpieces of old German and Dutch schools, a natural history collection and the State archives. To the south of the castle lies the old town, with market square, town hall and town church. The town possesses a technical high school, having (since 1900) power to confer the degree of doctor of engineering, and attended by about 2,000 students, two gymnasia, a school of agriculture, an artisans' school and a botanical garden. The chemist, Justus von Liebig, was born in Darmstadt in 1803. The industries are very varied.
To the east of the town lies the Mathildenhohe, formerly a park and now converted into villa residences. Here are the Alice hospital and the Russian church, built (1898-99) by the emperor Nicholas II. of Russia in memory of the empress Maria, wife of Alexander II.
See Walther, Darmstadt wie es war and wie es geworden (Darms. 1865) ; and Zernin and Worrier, Darmstadt and seine Umgebung (Zurich, 189o) .