Landshut

Landshut grew on the Isar beneath Trausnitz Castle, founded with the town by Duke Ludwig I in 1204. It became a Wittelsbach residence and, after Bavaria was divided in 1255, the capital of Lower Bavaria. Its fifteenth-century rulers were known as the rich dukes. In 1475 Duke Georg celebrated his marriage to the Polish princess Jadwiga Jagiellon with a magnificent festival in the town.

After Georg's death, the Landshut War of Succession reunited Bavaria-Landshut with Bavaria-Munich. Duke Ludwig X later built a Renaissance residence in the town, modelled on Mantua's Palazzo Te and completed in 1543; Wilhelm V transformed Trausnitz Castle in the same spirit. Swedish troops took and plundered Landshut three times during the Thirty Years' War. The university moved here from Ingolstadt in 1800, before departing for Munich in 1826.