Gandersheim

Gandersheim grew around an abbey of secular canonesses founded by Duke Liudolf of Saxony and his wife Oda in 852. Its church became a centre of religious and literary life: in the tenth century the writer Hrosvit worked among its community. Market and toll rights granted to the abbey in 990 supported the settlement, which was recorded as a town in 1159. Around 1330 the dukes of Brunswick built a castle at Gandersheim, a secular counterweight to the powerful abbey and its church.