Frankfurt

Frankfurt grew around a ford on the Main, first mentioned in 794, where the Franks and later the kings of the East Franks held assemblies in their palace. By the thirteenth century the burghers governed themselves under an imperial reeve: its council is recorded in 1266, and from 1311 it elected two mayors. Emperor Frederick II granted an autumn fair in 1240 and a spring fair followed in 1330, and the Main crossing and the Via Regia to Leipzig made the town a hub of long-distance trade. In 1333 the walls were extended to take in a New Town.

In 1349 the Jews of Frankfurt were massacred, as they had been in 1241. Frankfurt became a free imperial city in 1372, when it bought the office of imperial reeve, and the Golden Bull of 1356 confirmed it as the place where the Roman kings were elected, a role it had held for most elections since 1147. Its medieval population was only about ten thousand. From 1462 the Jews had to live in the walled Judengasse. The city adopted the Reformation in 1533, but after the Interim of 1548 gave Catholic chapters and monasteries back to the old church so as not to endanger its fairs and imperial elections.

From 1562 emperors were crowned in the Bartholomäus Cathedral, following a coronation route that led to the Römer, the town hall. The city's fortifications grew into large baroque bastions in the seventeenth century, and in 1742 Frankfurt even served as the residence of Emperor Charles VII for almost three years. Napoleon's era ended its imperial status in 1806, when it passed to the Prince-Primate Karl von Dalberg, and from 1815 it was a sovereign Free City of the German Confederation.