Munich

Munich began as a market that Henry the Lion founded in 1158 beside a crossing of the salt road over the Isar; Frederick Barbarossa granted it market, mint and toll rights, and the bishops of Freising kept a third of the income. It became a ducal residence in 1255. From 1314 Duke Louis IV was German king and from 1328 emperor, and he enlarged the city with a new ring of walls as his seat until 1347; the city's black and gold colours come from that imperial time. Burghers rose against their dukes repeatedly after 1397, and the dukes moved to a new residence at the edge of town. Hussite fears brought a second outer wall in 1429, and in 1442 Duke Albert III drove out the Jews. The Frauenkirche was begun in 1468, and around 1500 Munich, with just over 13,000 people, was still little bigger than the other ducal towns of Bavaria.

In 1506 Duke Albert IV's reunion of the duchies made Munich the sole capital of Bavaria, and the Wittelsbach court shaped the city from then on. Under William IV and Albert V it became a centre of Renaissance art and Counter-Reformation: the dukes moved into the Neuveste, began a picture collection, called the composer Ludwig Senfl to court, and founded the Hofbräuhaus in 1589, and the Jesuits built the church and college of Saint Michael.

Maximilian I made Munich the residence of an electorate in 1628. In 1632 Swedish troops occupied it, a ransom and hostages spared the city, and plague then killed a third of its people. Italian Baroque brought Nymphenburg and the Theatine church; in 1704 the Habsburgs occupied the city, and a rising of Bavarian burghers and peasants against them ended in the bloody Christmas of Sendling; the Academy of Sciences was founded in 1759, and the English Garden was laid out in 1789 as the medieval fortifications came down. When Napoleon made Bavaria a kingdom in 1806, Munich became its capital.