is a
motorway in
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
. It branches off the
A 3 at the
Würzburg-West triangle and ends near the border with
Switzerland.
The oldest part of the A 81 between the
Weinsberg intersection (
A 6) near
Heilbronn
Heilbronn () is a city in northern Baden-Württemberg, Germany, surrounded by Heilbronn District. With over 126,000 residents, it is the sixth-largest city in the state.
From the late Middle Ages, it developed into an important trading centre. A ...
and
Dreieck Leonberg (
A 8) near
Stuttgart was finished in the years 1938 to 1940. This section included the first tunnel built for an autobahn, the first
Engelberg tunnel near
Leonberg. When Weinsberg-Leonberg was upgraded to 3+3 lanes in the 1970s, the tunnel with its two lanes each and steep grades (up to 6%) became something of a bottleneck. In 1999 a new Engelberg tunnel was opened.
Original plans called for the A 81 to be continued northwards skirting the north-west of Würzburg to join up with the
A 7, but these plans were later abandoned. Instead, the A 81 shares a part of the A 8 to the Stuttgart intersection and then continues south on a motorway that was built as A 831 to Gärtringen, where it meets the original line again at a partly finished intersection. As a result of this change of plans, Gärtringen became one of the few exits in the German autobahn network that leave to the left.
Further south, the terrain required some spectacular engineering, including a bridge near Horb that spans 125 m above the
Neckar
The Neckar () is a river in Germany, mainly flowing through the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, with a short section through Hesse. The Neckar is a major right tributary of the Rhine. Rising in the Schwarzwald-Baar-Kreis near Sc ...
river. Currently, the A 81 ends near
Singen.
Exit list
(Hohentwiel)
External links
{{bundesautobahn
81
A081
A081