Hanau

Hanau grew around a castle protected by the waters of the Kinzig, not far from its meeting with the Main. The lords of Hanau took their name from the place, which became a town in 1303. As the settlement expanded beyond its first walls, new Renaissance fortifications were built in the sixteenth century to enclose the castle, the old town and its suburb.

In 1597 Count Philipp Ludwig II invited Protestant refugees to settle south of Hanau. French, Walloon and Dutch newcomers established a new town with its own church and administration, and their crafts helped make Hanau a centre of goldsmithing. During the Thirty Years' War imperial forces besieged the town in 1636 until Landgrave William V of Hesse-Kassel relieved it. The last count of Hanau died in 1736, and Hanau passed to Hesse-Kassel. Napoleon later ordered its fortifications demolished. In 1813 French troops defeated an Austro-Bavarian army near Hanau during their retreat from Germany. The administrations of the old and new towns were united in the 1820s, more than two centuries after the refugees founded their separate settlement.