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Imperial City of Nuremberg

Free Imperial City of Nuremberg
Freie Reichstadt Nürnberg  (German)
Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire
1219–1806


Coat of arms

Nuremberg, shown within the Holy Roman Empire as at 1648
Territory of the Imperial City, with modern district borders in yellow.
City lands in darker pink, condominiums in paler pink.
Capital Nuremberg
Government Republic
Historical era Middle Ages
 •  First documentary
mention

1050
 •  Großen Freiheitsbrief 1219
 •  Burgraviate sold to
city, exc. Blutgericht

1427
 •  Golden Bull 1356
 •  Landshut War of
Succession

1503–05
 •  Reformation 1525
 •  Annexed by Bavaria 1806
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Burgraviate of Nuremberg
Kingdom of Bavaria
Today part of  Germany


Coat of arms

The Imperial City of Nuremberg (German: Reichsstadt Nürnberg) was a free imperial city — independent city-state — within the Holy Roman Empire. After Nuremberg gained piecemeal independence from the Burgraviate of Nuremberg in the High Middle Ages and considerable territory from Bavaria in the Landshut War of Succession, it grew to become one of the largest and most important Imperial cities, the 'unofficial capital' of the Empire, particularly because Imperial Diets (Reichstage) and courts met at Nuremberg Castle. The Diets of Nuremberg were an important part of the administrative structure of the Empire. The Golden Bull of 1356, issued by Emperor Charles IV (reigned 1346–78), named Nuremberg as the city where newly elected kings of Germany must hold their first Imperial Diet, making Nuremberg one of the three highest cities of the Empire.

The cultural flowering of Nuremberg, in the 15th and 16th centuries, made it the center of the German Renaissance. Increased trade routes elsewhere and the ravages of the major European wars of the 17th and 18th centuries caused the city to decline and incur sizeable debts, resulting in the city's absorption into the new Kingdom of Bavaria on the signing of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, becoming one of the many territorial casualties of the Napoleonic Wars in a period known as the German mediatisation.


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Wikipedia

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