Eichstätt

The university, baroque and episcopal city of Eichstätt, located a good 60 kilometres south of Nuremberg on the banks of the Altmühl, marks the southernmost point of the Castle Road. Framed by the Jura plateaus of the Southern Franconian Alb, it also forms the centre of the Altmühltal Nature Park. 

The earliest settlement of what is now the town area took place as early as the Hallstatt period (8th to 6th century BC) approximately on the site of the cathedral; later, Celts settled in ‘Eistedd’. From 80 to 260 AD, there was a small Roman settlement in Eichstätt. After the Romans were driven out by the Alemanni, they and later the Bavarians formed the next generations of early Eichstätt residents. Evidence of this ancient settlement history can be found in the Museum of Prehistory and Early History at Willibaldsburg Castle, among other places.

Eichstätt also has a long history as a bishopric: in 740, Boniface, the ‘Apostle of the Germans’, received the area of ‘Eihstat’ as a gift, and shortly afterwards, the Anglo-Saxon monk Willibald, whom he had consecrated as bishop, founded the first monastery here. At the end of the 9th century, the relics of St. Walburga, a sister of Willibald, arrived in Eichstätt, prompting the founding of a second monastery, which later became the Benedictine Abbey of St. Walburg, which still exists today. In 908, the town was granted market, coinage and customs rights, as well as the right to build walls around the town, an event commemorated by the town in 2008 with a grand anniversary year.

At the turn of the 13th to 14th century, the citizens of Eichstätt fought for and won their first rights to freedom and co-determination, marking the beginning of a golden age for humanistic, bourgeois Eichstätt. At the same time, however, the prince-bishops gained more and more power and influence in the region, remaining its spiritual and secular rulers until the beginning of the 19th century. However, the fact that the Reformation was unable to gain a foothold here proved fatal for Eichstätt during the Thirty Years' War: as a ‘stronghold of Catholicism’, the city was conquered by the Swedes in 1634 and almost completely destroyed.

The reconstruction gave the city its current, almost unchanged Baroque appearance. In the second half of the 17th century, Graubünden architect Jakob Engel, alias Giacomo Angelini, laid the foundation for Eichstätt's current elegant and light-filled cityscape. He was followed in 1714 by his compatriot Gabriel de Gabrieli, to whom Eichstätt owes some of its most beautiful Baroque buildings. In the middle of the 18th century, Mauritio Pedetti took over. Like de Gabrieli, he had previously worked for the Margraves in Ansbach and played a key role in designing the residence there.

After secularisation, the prince-bishopric was awarded to the Kingdom of Bavaria. Between 1817 and 1833, Eichstätt also served as the capital of the Bavarian mediatic principality of Eichstätt, which was held by the Dukes of Leuchtenberg. Its location away from major transport routes significantly and permanently hampered economic development in the course of industrialisation, with the result that the city remained primarily an administrative and educational centre. The city survived both world wars undamaged.

In 1958, a teacher training college was established here, which was expanded into a comprehensive church university in 1972 and elevated to the Catholic University of Eichstätt in 1980. It is the only Catholic university in the German-speaking world. In 2001, it was renamed the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt.

As a result of the 1972 regional reform, the city, which had previously belonged to Middle Franconia, became part of the administrative district of Upper Bavaria and, at the same time, became the centre of the district of the same name as a ‘large district town’.