Nagold

Nagold lies beside the river of the same name at the edge of the northern Black Forest. Above the town stands Hohennagold Castle, a former seat of the counts who ruled the surrounding district. The settlement was recorded as early as 786, and under the counts of Hohenberg it grew into a walled town and the centre of a small lordship.

In 1363 Count Otto II of Hohenberg-Nagold sold his territory, including the town, to Württemberg. Nagold became the seat of a Württemberg administrative district. After the defeat at Nördlingen in 1634, the Thirty Years' War brought passing armies, billeting and plague; by the end of the conflict the town had suffered severely. Later wars also affected the district, and Nagold remained an administrative centre as Württemberg's territories were reorganized in the early nineteenth century.