Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans, episode 153, the rise and rise of the city of Nuremberg.

Also published as episode 16 of series 8 from the Interregnum to the Golden Bowl, 1250 to 1356.

In the same way that Jerusalem is the naval of the world, Nuremberg is the naval of Germany.

It's how Matthos Dresse described the city in 1581.

The astronomer Johannes Reggio Montanus moved to Nuremberg 100 years earlier, because

there one can easily associate with learned men wherever they live.

Because of the cosmopolitanism of its merchant, this place is regarded as the center

of Europe.

How did the city grow within 200 years from an imperial castle far from the main transport

links, without a harbour and on famously poor soil, into one of the three most important

urban centres in Germany, whose merchants were well regarded in all corners of the world, whose

printers published the works of Europe's leading intellectuals, whose artists

were and remain of global renown, and whose engineers produced breakthrough after breakthrough.

Let's find out.

But before we start, let me once again tell you that the history of the Germans is advertising

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And now, back to the show.

Ineer Silvio Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II and at the time Cardinal Leggett in the Empire,

wrote that, quote,

...