Graz

Graz lies in the Mur valley beneath the fortified Schlossberg, a market whose walls are first mentioned about 1233 and which took a panther as its arms around 1245. In 1379 it became the residence of the Habsburgs, who ruled Inner Austria from the castle: Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and the lands around Trieste. Frederick III, who reigned from 1435 to 1493, renewed the town castle and the Gothic parish church that later became the cathedral, and enlarged the walls; under his son Maximilian the castle received its double spiral staircase. In 1497 Maximilian ordered all Jewish communities out of Styria. Graz stayed a Habsburg residence, alongside Vienna and Innsbruck, until 1619.

From the 1520s the town turned mostly Lutheran under the apothecary and mayor Simon Arbeiter, and under Archduke Charles II, who ruled Inner Austria from 1564 to 1590, it was a Lutheran stronghold; the Pacification of Bruck in 1578 gave Protestants room. The Protestant Estates' school won renown before 1600, and Johannes Kepler taught there from 1594 to 1600, until he was expelled for his faith. In 1585 Charles II founded the university, soon given to the Jesuits, and Italian architects built the Renaissance Landhaus, where the Styrian estates met. The Protestant preachers were driven out in 1598 and their schools closed in 1599, and in 1619 the whole court moved to the Vienna Hofburg.

French troops entered Graz in 1797 and again in 1805. In 1809 the garrison of about 800 men on the Schlossberg held out against French batteries until the armistice forced it to leave, and the peace of Schönbrunn ordered the fortress razed. The citizens paid 2,987 gulden to save the clock tower and the bell tower from the French sappers.