Eichstätt

Eichstätt lies on the Altmühl beneath the Willibaldsburg in Bavaria. Saint Willibald founded its diocese in 741 on the site of an old Roman station, and the town received walls and a charter in 908. The remains of Saint Walpurga were brought here from Heidenheim in 870; her burial place became a Benedictine abbey in 1035. Prince-bishops ruled Eichstätt as an ecclesiastical territory within the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1613 Basilius Besler published the Hortus Eystettensis, an important botanical work associated with the gardens of Eichstätt. The prince-bishopric was secularised in 1802 and the town became part of the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1806. King Maximilian I later included it in the principality granted to his son-in-law Eugène de Beauharnais in 1817; an episcopal see was re-established in 1821.