Freiberg

Freiberg is the silver city of the Ore Mountains, founded after silver ore was discovered at the village of Christiansdorf in 1168. Margrave Otto of Meissen claimed the mining right for himself and promised the miners personal freedom, and the town grew up around the mines. In the High Middle Ages it was the largest town of the March of Meissen; its silver and the mint made the Saxon rulers wealthy, and the Freiberg mining and town law, set down in writing in 1307, spread across the Ore Mountains.

The late Gothic hall church of Saint Mary, the cathedral, rose on the Lower Market between 1484 and 1501, with the Golden Gate on its south side. In 1455 the knight Kunz von Kauffungen, who had kidnapped the Saxon princes, was beheaded on the Upper Market. In 1594 a burial chapel in Italian Renaissance style was built beside the cathedral, where the Protestant princes of the Albertine line were laid to rest. Swedish troops besieged the town in 1642 during the Thirty Years' War, and a monument recalls its defence. After the Seven Years' War forced Saxony to push mining in order to pay reparations, the Mining Academy was founded in 1765; Alexander von Humboldt was among its later students.