Konstanz

Konstanz is a university city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, at the western end of Upper Lake Constance where the Rhine flows through, bordering Switzerland to the south and southwest. Founded around 40 AD as a Roman settlement known as Drusomagus or Constantia, it became an Imperial City in 1192 and for more than 1,200 years was the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Konstanz; the city hosted the Council of Constance from 1414 to 1418, at which Jan Hus was executed and Pope Martin V was elected. The Protestant Reformation took hold there in the 1520s before the city returned to Catholic rule under Habsburg Austria, and Konstanz was spared Allied bombing in the Second World War because of its proximity to Switzerland. Its population is roughly 83,000 to 86,919, and the University of Konstanz, founded in 1966, is counted among the elite universities of Germany.