Bayreuth, Germany

In 1398 Bayreuth was partitioned from Nuremberg, becoming the Principality of Bayreuth (German: Fürstentum Bayreuth). Until 1604, however, the princely residence and the centre of the territory was the castle of Plassenburg in Kulmbach and as such the territory was officially known as the Principality of Kulmbach. The town of Bayreuth developed slowly and was affected time and again by disasters.

In February 1430, the Hussites devastated Bayreuth and the town hall and churches were razed. Matthäus Merian described this event in 1642 as follows: "In 1430 the Hussites from Bohemia attacked / Culmbach and Barreut / and committed great acts of cruelty / like wild animals / against the common people / and certain individuals. / The priests / monks and nuns they either burnt at the stake / or took them onto the ice of lakes and rivers / (in Franconia and Bavaria) and doused them with cold water / and killed them in a deplorable way / as Boreck reported in the Bohemian Chronicle, page 450".

By 1528, less than ten years after the start of the Reformation, the lords of the Frankish margrave territories switched to the Lutheran faith.

In 1605 a great fire, caused by negligence, destroyed 137 of the town's 251 houses. In 1620 plague broke out and, in 1621, there was another big fire in the town. The town also suffered during the Thirty Years' War.

A turning point in the town's history came in 1603 when Margrave Christian, the son of the elector, John George of Brandenburg, moved the aristocratic residence from the castle of Plassenburg above Kulmbach to Bayreuth. The first Hohenzollern palace was built in 1440–1457 under Margrave John the Alchemist. It was the forerunner of today's Old Palace (Altes Schloss) and was expanded and renovated many times. The development of the new capital stagnated due to the Thirty Years' War, but afterwards many baroque buildings were added to the town. After Christian's death in 1655 his grandson, Christian Ernest, followed him, ruling from 1661 until 1712. He was an educated and well-travelled man, whose tutor had been the statesman Joachim Friedrich von Blumenthal. He founded the Christian-Ernestinum Grammar School and, in 1683, participated in the liberation of Vienna which had been besieged by the Turks. To commemorate this feat, he had the Margrave Fountain built as a monument on which he is depicted as the victor of the Turks; it now stands outside the New Palace (Neues Schloss). During this time, the outer ring of the town wall and the castle chapel (Schlosskirche) were built.

Christian Ernest's successor, the Crown Prince and later Margrave, George William, began in 1701 to establish the then independent town of St Georgen am See (today, the district of St Georgen) with its castle, the so-called Ordensschloss, a town hall, a prison and a small barracks. In 1705 he founded the Order of Sincerity (Ordre de la Sincérité), which was renamed in 1734 to the Order of the Red Eagle and had the monastery church built, which was completed in 1711. In 1716 a princely porcelain factory was established in St. Georgen.

The first 'castle' in the park of the Hermitage was built at this time by Margrave George William (1715–1719).

In 1721, the town council acquired the palace of Baroness Sponheim (today's Old Town Hall or Altes Rathaus) as a replacement for the town hall built in 1440 in the middle of the market place and destroyed by fire.

In 1735, a nursing home, the so-called Gravenreuth Stift, was founded by a private foundation in St. Georgen. The cost of the building exceeded the funds of the foundation, but Margrave Frederick came to their aid.

Bayreuth experienced its Golden Age during the reign (1735–1763) of Margrave Frederick and Margravine Wilhelmina of Bayreuth, the favourite sister of Frederick the Great. During this time, under the direction of court architects, Joseph Saint-Pierre and Carl von Gontard, numerous courtly buildings and attractions were created: the Margravial Opera House with its richly furnished baroque theatre (1744–1748), the New 'Castle' and Sun Temple (1749–1753) at the Hermitage, the New Palace with its courtyard garden (1754 ff) to replace the Old Palace which had burned down through the carelessness of the margrave, and the magnificent row of buildings in today's Friedrichstraße. There was even a unique version of the rococo architectural style, the so-called Bayreuth Rococo which characterised the aforementioned buildings, especially their interior design.