Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf began as a small settlement where the little Düssel river runs into the Rhine, and its lord, Count Adolf of Berg, gave it town rights in 1288 after his victory at Worringen. For its first century it was a modest Rhenish town under the counts of Berg. In 1380 King Wenceslaus raised Count William of Berg to a duke of the Empire, and the same year the new duke decided to leave his remote castle on the Wupper and make Düsseldorf on the Rhine his capital. A castle there is first mentioned in 1382, and from 1386 the duke and his wife lived in it.

For the next four centuries Düsseldorf was the seat of the Duchies of Berg, of Jülich-Berg and of Jülich-Cleves-Berg. Duke William the Rich had the castle rebuilt in Renaissance style by Alessandro Pasqualini, and in 1585 the wedding of his heir John William with Jacobe of Baden was the most splendid of the century, with an early opera-like entertainment, Orpheus and Amphion. After the extinction of the line in 1609 the town fell to the Wittelsbach house of Palatinate-Neuburg in the succession dispute, whose heir converted to Catholicism in 1613.

John William, called Jan Wellem, kept Düsseldorf as his main residence from 1690 after Heidelberg had been destroyed, and around 1705 he built a picture gallery with an internationally known art collection. The town was fortified anew from 1732, occupied by the French in 1757 during the Seven Years' War, and surrendered to the duke Ferdinand of Brunswick after the Battle of Krefeld in 1758. In 1795 it capitulated to the French revolutionary army, and it was returned only in 1801.