Leoben

Leoben stands in a bend of the Mur in Upper Styria. A market was recorded here in 1173, and from 1261 King Ottokar II moved the town north to its present site within the river loop, laying out a fortified settlement with a square plan. By 1314 Leoben was recorded as a centre of the iron trade, linking the town to the mines and furnaces of the surrounding mountains.

Ottoman raiders burned the western suburb in 1480. Leoben formally adopted the Augsburg Confession in 1572, but Catholic restoration began in 1613. The Jesuits opened a Latin school in 1620 and built Saint Francis Xavier's church in 1660–1665. In 1797 Napoleon and Austrian representatives concluded the preliminary peace of Leoben in the town; French troops occupied the town again in 1805.