Siegburg

Siegburg is a city of about 42,000 people in the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis district of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It lies on the banks of the Sieg and Agger rivers, a short distance from Bonn and Cologne, in the southeast corner of the Cologne Lowland, and its name means the fort on the Sieg. The city grew from a Benedictine monastery, Michaelsberg Abbey, which Archbishop-Elector Anno II of Cologne founded in 1064 on the hill known as the Michaelsberg. A settlement that arose beside it was first mentioned as a city in 1182, and Siegburg reached the height of its prosperity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when it became famous for pottery, above all the Siegburg pitchers. It has been the seat of the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis since 1816. Siegburg/Bonn station on the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed line links it to the region, and the city is twinned with five towns in Poland, Portugal, France, Greece and Turkey.