Dillenburg

Dillenburg was the ancestral seat of the Orange branch of the house of Nassau. First recorded in 1254, the town grew beneath a castle built on the hill above it in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. This early timber fortress was destroyed during the Dernbach Feud, but Dillenburg remained a centre of the Nassau lands.

William of Orange was born here, and from his residence at Dillenburg he organized resistance to Spanish rule in the Netherlands between 1567 and 1572. The later residence was destroyed in 1760 during the Seven Years' War. Its remains were used to build the Wilhelmstraße. A school of forestry founded by Georg Ludwig Hartig was moved to Dillenburg in 1797 and remained until 1805, when Napoleon dissolved the principality.