Nördlingen

Sister cities

• Stollberg
• Markham
• Wagga Wagga
• Adur
• Riom
• Olomouc

History

Finds in the Ofnet Caves near the city show that the site of present-day Nördlingen was already inhabited in the late Palaeolithic. In the Large Ofnet, in 1908 archaeologist R. R. Schmidt found two dish-shaped pits in which human skulls were lying "like eggs in flat baskets". In the larger pit were 27 skulls and in the other there were 6 skulls. The skulls were arranged concentrically with their faces turned towards the setting sun. In the area around Nördlingen, additional sites dating to almost all of the subsequent prehistoric epochs have been discovered. Particularly important was an area on the eastern edge of the district Baldingen, where settlements have been found belonging to the Neolithic Linear Pottery culture, the Bronze Age Urnfield culture, and the Celtic Iron Age Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. The area which includes present-day Nördlingen was part of the Roman province of Raetia, but little research has been conducted on the city's Roman period. A Roman villa has been excavated in the district of Holheim, and can be visited today. Another villa with an adjoining burial ground has been identified in the Baldingen district. A settlement (vicus), built in 85 C.E., occupied the southern part of the city until 259–260 C.E., when it was destroyed during the conquest of what is now southern Germany by the Germanic-speaking Alemanni tribes. The Roman settlement may have been the one known as Septemiacum, which is supposed to have been built between 80–300 C.E., although it is possible that this particular settlement was actually located at a different site such as Oberdorf, leaving the name of the settlement at Nördlingen uncertain. The Alemannic people occupied the Nördlingen area during the 6th and 7th centuries, during which time the region was gradually…