Dinkelsbühl is a historic town in Central Franconia, a region of Germany that is now part of the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany. Dinkelsbühl is a former free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire. In local government terms, Dinkelsbühl lies near the western edge of the Landkreis of Ansbach, north of Aalen.
View of the old town from the church tower
Wörnitz gate
Saint George's Minster
St. George's Minster interior
In the Holy Roman Empire, the collective term free and imperial cities, briefly worded free imperial city, was used from the fifteenth century to denote a self-ruling city that had a certain amount of autonomy and was represented in the Imperial Diet.
Swabian Rottweil maintained its independence up to the mediatization of 1802–03. Rottweil, c. 1435.
A partial list of the Free Imperial Cities of Swabia based on the Reichsmatrikel of 1521. It indicates the number of horsemen (left hand column) and infantry (right hand column) which each Imperial Estate had to contribute to the defence of the Empire.
Weissenburg-im-Nordgau in 1725
Württemberg more than doubled its size when it absorbed some 15 Free Cities (in orange) and other territories during the mediatisations of 1803 and 1806.