Offenburg is a city in the state of Baden-Württemberg, in south-western Germany. With nearly 60,000 inhabitants (2019), it is the largest city and the administrative capital of the Ortenaukreis.
Aerial view
City Hall
Medieval city wall with banana trees in Zwinger Park
Medieval city wall
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.