Weiden in der Oberpfalz

Weiden in der Oberpfalz is a district-free town in Bavaria, Germany, in the Upper Palatinate. It lies about 100 kilometres east of Nuremberg and 35 kilometres west of the Czech border, and it is the second largest town of its governmental district after Regensburg. The place is first mentioned in a document of 1241 and grew as a trading centre where two major routes, the Goldene Strasse and the Magdeburger Strasse, crossed. Fires, the Thirty Years War and plague held it back until the late eighteenth century, and the arrival of the railway in 1863 and of glass and porcelain firms drove its growth. It became district-free in 1919. About 42,000 people live there. The old town hall of 1539 to 1545, the market square with Renaissance houses and the International Ceramic Museum are among its sights, and the composer Max Reger lived and studied there.