Nuremberg, Free Imperial City of

The Free Imperial City of Nuremberg (German: Reichsstadt Nürnberg) is a free imperial city—independent city-state—within the Holy Roman Empire.

After Nuremberg gains piecemeal independence from the Burgraviate of Nuremberg in the High Middle Ages and considerable territory from Bavaria in the Landshut War of Succession, it grows to become one of the largest and most important Imperial cities, the 'unofficial capital' of the Empire, particularly because Imperial Diets (Reichstage) and courts meet at Nuremberg Castle.

The Diets of Nuremberg are an important part of the administrative structure of the Empire.

The Golden Bull of 1356, issued by Emperor Charles IV (reigned 1346–78), names Nuremberg as the city where newly elected kings of Germany must hold their first Imperial Diet, making Nuremberg one of the three highest cities of the Empire.

The cultural flowering of Nuremberg in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries makes it the center of the German Renaissance.

Increased trade routes elsewhere and the ravages of the major European wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries caused the city to decline and incur sizable debts, resulting in the city's absorption into the new Kingdom of Bavaria on the signing of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, becoming one of the many territorial casualties of Napoleon's Great French War in a period known as the German Mediatization.

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