Laid out in 1599 by Duke Friedrich I of Württemberg around what is still the largest market square in Germany, Freudenstadt was burned out in April 1945 and rebuilt to its original plan. Its Kurhaus, the spa building at the centre of the town's health trade, houses the theatre: a hall for touring plays, operetta, orchestral concerts and the entertainments a Black Forest resort offers its visitors. The theatre in Freudenstadt’s Kurhaus belongs to a cultural complex built in 1954 by architect Ludwig Schweizer.