Saarbrücken

Saarbrücken grew on the Saar beneath a castle first recorded in 999, when Emperor Otto III granted it to the bishops of Metz. A county took shape around the stronghold, and in 1321 or 1322 Count Johann I granted town status both to Saarbrücken and to the fishing village of Saint Johann across the river. The two communities shared an administration. From 1381 the counts of Nassau-Saarbrücken became the principal rulers of the area.

A stone bridge joined the two banks in the sixteenth century, and Count Ludwig II later rebuilt the castle as a Renaissance residence. The Thirty Years' War devastated Saarbrücken; in 1677 French troops burned almost the whole town. The eighteenth century brought renewal under Prince William Henry, who took the coal mines into public ownership and sponsored new buildings. Architect Friedrich Joachim Stengel shaped the residence with Baroque churches, a town hall and a river crane. French revolutionary troops took Saarbrücken in 1793, and the county was annexed to France. Following Napoleon's defeat, the town passed to Prussia in 1815. Its coalfields and its position on the Saar remained central to the region's development.