Siegen

Siegen lies in the basin of the upper Sieg, among wooded hills shaped by a long history of mining. Its walls and the Upper Castle protected a town shared in the thirteenth century by the counts of Nassau and the archbishops of Cologne. Nassau's authority over the surrounding Siegerland was tied to rights of justice and protection, while the castle became a landmark above the town.

In 1607 a division of Nassau lands made Siegen the residence of Count John VII of Nassau-Siegen, who took up the Upper Castle as his principal seat. The painter Peter Paul Rubens had been born in Siegen in 1577. After John VII's death the county was divided between branches of his family, one Catholic and the other Protestant. The Nassau-Siegen line ended in 1743, and the Upper Castle became an administrative centre for Nassau-Dietz.