Weilheim

Weilheim stands on the Ammer in the Bavarian Alpine foreland, near the old Roman road over the Brenner Pass to Augsburg. It was recorded in 1010 when King Henry II granted a farm there to Polling Abbey. A palisade protected the settlement by 1236, and around 1328 the Munich patrician Ludwig Pütrich endowed a hospital outside its walls.

When plague struck Munich in 1521, the Bavarian dukes Wilhelm IV and Ludwig took up residence temporarily in Weilheim. The early seventeenth century brought a flourishing school of sculpture, represented by artists including Georg Petel and Hans Krumpper. In 1611 a timber yard was established on the Ammer, where logs were assembled into rafts for the journey downriver to the Amper. A Franciscan monastery followed in 1639, founded in response to a shortage of priests.