Fulda

Fulda grew around the Benedictine monastery founded in 744 by Sturmi, a disciple of Saint Boniface. Its early patrons included the Carolingian rulers, and in 751 the abbey was placed directly under papal authority. After Boniface was killed among the Frisians in 754, his relics were brought to Fulda. The monastery became a place of pilgrimage and learning, with a famous school and a church rebuilt to honour its patron. Its basilica took the plan of Old Saint Peter's in Rome as a model for the shrine.

The abbots ruled a substantial territory as princes of the Empire. In the sixteenth century, when Protestantism had gained ground among their subjects, Prince-Abbot Balthasar von Dernbach called Jesuits to Fulda and ordered the return to Catholicism. His rule also saw witch trials in which hundreds were arrested. The abbey became a bishopric in 1752, and its rulers bore the title of prince-bishop as well as prince-abbot.

Fulda's rulers reshaped their residence in the Baroque age. Johann Dientzenhofer rebuilt the cathedral between 1704 and 1712 and remodelled the palace in the same years; a porcelain factory operated from 1764 to 1789. Secularization brought the ecclesiastical principality to an end in 1802. After several changes of ruler in the Napoleonic period, most of its territory passed to the Electorate of Hesse following the Congress of Vienna.