Wetzlar

Wetzlar is a city in the German state of Hesse, set on the river Lahn about 51 kilometres north of Frankfurt. With some 55,000 inhabitants at the start of 2019 it is the twelfth largest city in Hesse and one of the state's ten regional centres, a university town that is also an industrial and commercial hub for the surrounding Lahn-Dill district at the northern edge of the Taunus. In the Holy Roman Empire it was a free imperial city, and it is best remembered as the seat of the Imperial Supreme Court, the Reichskammergericht. Its old town lies on the German Timber-Frame Road, with long rows of half-timbered houses, the Eisenmarkt square and a steep, tightly packed medieval street plan. The landmark is the sandstone cathedral of St. Mary, begun in the twelfth century in Romanesque style and continued in Gothic style, which Catholic and Protestant congregations share and whose second steeple was never completed. Bombing in the Second World War damaged the cathedral heavily, and restoration followed in the 1950s. The city has twice hosted the Hessentag state festival, in 1975 and in 2012.