Editing Gotha (section)

=== Topography ===
[[File:Gotha Blick vom Bürgerturm.jpg|thumb|View from Krahnberg mountain over the city]]
Gotha is situated in a flat landscape within the fertile [[Thuringian Basin]]. A tectonic dislocation traverses the city from north-west to south-east. Thereby, it forms three prominent hills: the 431 m high ''Krahnberg'' with the ''Ratsholz'' forest in the north-west, the hill of Friedenstein Castle in the city centre and the 409 m high ''Seeberg'' in the south-east. The city itself lies at an elevation of 300 m and the municipal territory is nearly free of forest (with the two named mountains as exceptions) and is in intensive agricultural use. As one out of only very few ancient cities in Germany, Gotha is not situated on a river, so that water supply was already a problem in the Middle Ages. For that reason, the ''Leinakanal'' was built in the 14th century over a distance of more than 25 kilometres, which was at the time an enormous task. The Leinakanal brings water from [[Hörsel]] and [[Apfelstädt (river)|Apfelstädt]] river to Gotha, overcoming the watershed between [[Elbe]] (Apfelstädt) and [[Weser]] (Gotha). The drain of Leinakanal is the ''Flutgraben'', a tributary of [[Nesse (Hörsel)|Nesse]]. The [[Thuringian Forest]] is located {{convert|15|km|0|abbr=on}} south-west of Gotha.