Renaissance City   Augsburg

Augsburg lies between the rivers Lech and Wertach and is named after its founder, Emperor Augustus. Two patrician families - the Fuggers and the Welsers - transformed Augsburg into a rich and influential town through their banking and trading activities. The city prospered again after the Thirty Years War, this time thanks to its goldsmiths, silversmiths and printers. The legacy left by the Roman, rococo and Renaissance eras still draws visitors to Augsburg today, as does its reputation as a modern city of culture.

The city was founded in 15 BC in the reign of Roman emperor Augustus as a garrison called Augusta Vindelicorum. It was laid to waste by the Huns in the fifth century, by Charlemagne in the eighth, and by Welf of Bavaria in the eleventh; it rose each time only to greater prosperity. Given its strategic location on the trade routes to Italy, it became a major trading centre. It produced large quantities of woven goods, cloth and textiles, and was the base for the Fugger banking empire. The Fuggerei, part of the city devoted to housing for the needy citizens of Augsburg, was founded in 1516 and is still in use today. In 1530 the Augsburg Confession was presented to the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Augsburg. Following the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, after which the rights of religious minorities in imperial cities were to be protected, a mixed Catholic-Protestant city council presided over a majority Protestant population. Until the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), religious peace in the city was largely maintained despite increasing confessional tensions. In 1629 Emperor Ferdinand II issued the  Edict of Restitution resulting in the installation of an entirely Catholic city government that radically curtailed the rights of local Protestants.

These difficulties, together with the discovery of America, and of the route to India by the Cape, conspired to destroy the town's prosperity. In 1806, when the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, Augsburg lost its independence and became part of the kingdom of Bavaria. It increased considerably in industrial importance in the nineteenth century. It contained large cotton and woollen mills, machine shops, and manufacturers of acetylene gas, paper, chemicals, jewellery, and leather. Also it gave birth to the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg (Later to merge with Maschinenfabrik Nürnberg and become Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Nürnberg or MAN AG) - a machine factory where Rudolf Diesel pioneered commercial production of his Diesel engine.

In 1945 elements of the US Army occupied the heavily damaged city.