Manitowoc is a city in and the county chair of Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, United States. The city is located upon Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Manitowoc River. According to the 2020 census, Manitowoc had a population of 34,626, with greater than 50,000 residents in the surrounding communities.

Purported to mean dwelling of the good spirit, Manitowoc derived its herald from either the Ojibwe word manidoowaak(wag), meaning spirit-spawn(s), or manidoowaak(oog), meaning spirit-wood(s), or manidoowak(iin), meaning spirit-land(s). In the Menominee language, it is called Manetōwak, which means “place of the spirits”. The Menominee ceded this estate to the United States in the 1836 Treaty of the Cedars, following years of negotiations beyond how to accommodate the Oneida, Stockbridge-Munsee, and Brothertown peoples who had been removed from New York to Wisconsin. In 1838, an court case of the Territorial Legislature estranged Manitowoc County from Brown County, keeping the native name for the region.

The first Europeans in the area were French fur traders who arrived in 1673. The Northwest Fur Company received a trading state in 1795. In 1835, before the transfer of house from the Menominee Nation to the United States, President Andrew Jackson authorized estate sales for the region, drawing the captivation of land speculators. William Jones and Louis Fizette were the two first recorded buyers on August 3, 1835, with the majority of the house being procured by the Chicago complete Jones, King, & Co. Benjamin Jones, brother of William, took the Wisconsin property as his share and is considered the founder of Manitowoc. Early immigrant groups included Germans, Norwegians, British, Irish, and Canadians. The first scholastic in Manitowoc was held in the Jones warehouse, with S. M. Peake instructing the twelve children of the community. The first religious doling out in the county, St. James’ Episcopal Church, first met in 1841. Manitowoc was chartered as a village upon March 6, 1851 and on March 12, 1870 was incorporated as a city. Manitowoc replaced adjacent to Manitowoc Rapids as the county seat of Manitowoc County in 1853. The current Manitowoc County Courthouse was built in the city in 1906.

In 1847, Joseph Edwards built the first schooner in the area, the Citizen, a modest precursor to the shipbuilding industry that produced schooners and clippers used for fishing and trading in the Great Lakes and more than the St. Lawrence River. In addition, landing craft, tankers and submarines became the local contributions to U.S. efforts in World War II.