The greatest of the south German imperial cities and the one that built a real state around itself. Frederick II's Letter of Freedom of 1219 conferred the rights of a free imperial town and stripped the burgraves of most of their authority; over the following three centuries the council bought, seized and inherited a rural territory of nearly 500 square miles, the largest imperial-city land holding in Germany. It was the first imperial town to adopt the Reformation, around 1525, and its metalworkers, printers, instrument-makers and merchants made it — with Augsburg — one of the two hinges of the trade route from Italy to the north.
Ruined by the shift of trade to the Atlantic and by the Thirty Years' War, and burdened with enormous debt, it offered itself to Prussia in 1796 and was refused. It kept its Reichsfreiheit in the 1803 mediatization, but on the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire it passed under the sovereignty of Bavaria in 1806 and has been a Bavarian city ever since.
The standard English-language study of the Nuremberg city-republic's government, territory and economy at its peak; verified on Open Library (/works/OL3905036W).
Current standard survey placing the imperial cities in the Empire's constitutional order; verified on Open Library (/works/OL17595795W).