Würzburg

The Celtic Segodunum and later a Roman fort stood on the hill where the Marienberg fortress now rises, and a Merovingian duke ruled from here from about 650. In 686 the Irish missionaries Kilian, Kolonat and Totnan brought Christianity, and the town was first recorded in 704. Saint Boniface founded the diocese in 742, and in 1168 its bishops were granted ducal rights in eastern Franconia. Jews were massacred in 1147 and 1298, and the university was founded in 1402.

The citizens revolted against the prince-bishops several times but were defeated at Bergtheim in 1400. In the Peasants' War of 1525 the sculptor and councillor Tilman Riemenschneider refused to fight the peasants and was imprisoned and tortured in the fortress. Between 1626 and 1631 the Würzburg witch trials sent an estimated 600 to 900 people to the stake, until the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus took the city. The Schönborn prince-bishops began the Residence in 1720. After secularisation the city passed to Bavaria, finally in 1814. The anti-Jewish Hep-Hep riots began here in 1819, and in 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays at the university.

Under the Nazis the city's Jews, around 2,000 in the early 1930s, were persecuted and, from 1941 to 1943, deported to the camps. On 16 March 1945 British bombers destroyed about 90 per cent of the city in 17 minutes; around 5,000 people died in the firestorm, and American troops took the city in early April. Over the next 20 years the historic buildings were carefully reconstructed, much of the first clearing done by the Trümmerfrauen, the rubble women. The Residence became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981, and the last American troops left in 2008.

Würzburg's identity is shaped by its prince-bishops and its saints. Kilian, the Irish missionary martyred here, is the patron saint, honoured by the Kiliani fair each July, and the skyline of towers and domes — the cathedral, the Neumünster, the Marienkapelle and the Käppele — reflects a strongly Catholic past. Riemenschneider, one of the most prolific sculptors of the late Gothic, also served as one of the city's two mayors; the poet Walther von der Vogelweide is thought to be buried beside the Neumünster; and Richard Wagner was chorus master at the city theatre in 1833, when he finished his first opera, Die Feen.

Music is central to the calendar. The Mozart Festival, held in the Residence since 1922, is the oldest in Germany devoted to the composer, and the University of Music grew out of a collegium founded in 1797, the country's oldest conservatory. The Africa Festival in May is considered the largest of its kind in Europe. Students make up a large part of the population, and English and other languages are often heard in the streets.

Wine is the local passion: the city is ringed by vineyards, the great charitable foundations still make wine, and on summer evenings people gather on the Old Main Bridge with a glass in hand. Sport has its stars too — the basketball player Dirk Nowitzki was born and grew up here and began his career at the local club, Baskets Würzburg. The local speech is East Franconian, and many residents do not like being lumped together with Bavarians.

Würzburg had an estimated 126,000 inhabitants in 2023, making it the second-largest city in Franconia after Nuremberg and the administrative seat of Lower Franconia. The University of Würzburg alone has about 29,000 students, and the University of Applied Sciences nearly 8,000 more, so term times and exam periods set much of the city's rhythm. The university hospital is the city's largest employer, and the universities employ thousands more; the printing-press maker Koenig & Bauer was founded here in 1817.

People live in the old town inside the Ringpark, in the student-heavy Sanderau to the south, in Frauenland to the east, in Zellerau and the Mainviertel across the river, and in Grombühl beyond the station, home to the university hospital. The former American Leighton Barracks on the Hubland have been turned into a new district, with a park created for the state garden show of 2018.

Days run on trams, bicycles and walking in the compact centre. The market square is busy with stalls and lunchtime bratwurst, and in summer the riverbanks and the bridge fill in the evenings. Since May 2025 the city has been led by Mayor Martin Heilig.

Würzburg is a wine city: three of Germany's fifteen largest wine estates are based here. Franconian wine is mainly white, much of it Silvaner, very dry, and bottled in the Bocksbeutel, a bottle shaped like a flattened ellipsoid. The Würzburger Stein vineyard above the city has produced Steinwein since at least the 8th century and is planted mainly with Riesling and Silvaner, while the old charitable foundations still make wine: the Juliusspital, the second-largest winery in Germany, keeps its cellar beneath its northern wing, and the Bürgerspital runs a wine tavern in the old town.

The food is Franconian. The city has its own sausage, the Würzburger Bratwurst, also called the Winzerbratwurst, and a stand on the market square sells bratwurst in a roll. Schäufele, pork shoulder roasted on the bone with its rind scored in a criss-cross pattern, comes with Klöße, potato dumplings. A local speciality is Meefischli, small fish fried in oil; the name is also given to puff-pastry sweets made in imitation of them.

The large student population has brought cafés and Asian and southern European restaurants to the university quarter, and Würzburg could once claim Germany's oldest pizzeria, opened by Nick di Camillo in 1952.