The Reichswald has an area of around 25,000 hectares and is divided into a northern and southern part by the Pegnitz. It is one of the largest urban recreational forests in the immediate vicinity of a major German city. Large parts of it are protected as a ban forest. In the Middle Ages, the Nuremberg Reichswald belonged to the imperial estate, i.e. the crown property of the Roman-German electoral kings near their Nuremberg imperial castle, and was administered by the imperial city of Nuremberg. With the Reichswald program 1986–2003 a natural mixed forest was aimed for by planting new hardwoods. There are a total of 20 different forest types, from wet alder forests to oak-beech and oak-pine forests to lichen-pine forests. In addition to the predominant coniferous forests, there are also quarry and swamp forests along the forest streams, biotopes have developed in the abandoned quarries, the rivers have washed up sandy terraces from which the fine sand was blown into inland dunes in the forest by storms. Forest ponds, birch forests, sandy grasslands, forest meadows, heaths and hills complete the picture of a diversity that at first glance would not have been suspected.