Ulm is located on the eastern edges of the Swabian Jura mountain range, on the upper course of the River Danube , at the confluence with the small Blau Stream , coming from the Blautopf in the west. The mouth of the Iller also falls within Ulm's city limits. The city was part of Ulm until , and Ulm and Neu-Ulm have a combined population of around , Ulm forms an urban district of its own Stadtkreis Ulm , and is the administrative seat of the Alb-Donau-Kreis , the district that surrounds it on three sides, but which the city itself is not a part of.
Ulm is the overall 11th-largest city on the Danube River , and the third-largest German Danubian city after Regensburg and Ingolstadt. Founded around , Ulm is rich in history and traditions as a former free imperial city.
In , the then tiny village of Wiblingen was incorporated into Ulm, which led to that Wiblingen Abbey with its monastic library and its True Cross reliquary Heilig-Kreuz-Reliquie , that allegedly contains wood particles from the True Cross , is now part of Ulm. Ulm lies at the point where the rivers Blau and Iller join the Danube , at an altitude of m 1, Across from the old town, on the other side of the river, lies the twin city of Neu-Ulm in the state of Bavaria , smaller than Ulm and, until , a part of it population c.
Except for the Danube in the south, the city is surrounded by forests and hills which rise to altitudes of over metres 2, South of the Danube, plains and hills finally end in the northern edge of the Alps , which are approximately kilometres 62 miles from Ulm and are visible from the city on clear days.
The city of Ulm is situated in the northern part of the North Alpine Foreland basin , where the basin reaches the Swabian Alb. The Turritellenplatte of Ermingen "Erminger Turritellenplatte" is a famous palaeontological site of Burdigalian age.
