Linz

Linz lies on the Danube where the Romans had the fort of Lentia, and its German name appears in 799. The Babenbergs laid it out as a planned town in 1207. The Linz toll was one of the Austrian dukes' chief sources of income, and from the end of the thirteenth century it was the seat of the provincial governor of Austria above the Enns. From 1489 to 1493 Emperor Frederick III, driven from Vienna by Matthias Corvinus, made it the centre of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1497 Maximilian I granted the right to build a bridge across the Danube, only the third in Austria after Vienna and Krems.

The town was Protestant until 1600. The estates raised the Renaissance Landhaus, and in its school Johannes Kepler taught from 1612 to 1626. From 1600 Jesuits and Capuchins carried out the Counter-Reformation, which helped to provoke the Peasants' War of 1626, when Stefan Fadinger's peasants besieged Linz for nine weeks. After the Thirty Years' War the town was rebuilt in Baroque style, and in 1672 a wool factory was founded, the first textile factory in Austria.

On 15 August 1800 a great fire damaged the castle, the Landhaus and the old town. In 1832 the horse-drawn railway from Budweis to Linz opened, one of the first railways on the Continent.