Boppard

Boppard, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the left bank of the Rhine, 12 m. S. of Coblenz on the mainline to Cologne. Pop. (1900) 5806. It is an old town still partly surrounded by medieval walls, and its most noteworthy buildings are the Roman Catholic parish church (12th and 13th centuries); the Carmelite church (1318), the former castle, now used for administrative offices; the Evangelical church (1851, enlarged in 1887); and the former Benedictine motnastery of the Marienberg, founded 1123 and since 1839 a hydropathic establishment, crowning a hill 100 ft. above the Rhine. Boppard is a favourite tourist centre, and being less pent in by hills than many other places in this part of the picturesque gorge of the Rhine, has in modern times become a residential town. It has some comparatively insignificant industries, such as tanning and tobacco manufacture; its direct trade is in wine and fruit.

Boppard (Baudobriga) was founded by the Romans; under the Merovingian dynasty it became a royal residence. During the middle ages it was a considerable centre of commerce and shipping, and under the Hohenstaufen emperors was raised to the rank of a free imperial city. In 1312, however, the emperor Henry VII. pledged the town to his brother Baldwin, archbishop-elector of Trier, and it remained in the possession of the electors until it was absorbed by France during the Revolutionary epoch. It was assigned by the congress of Vienna in 1815 to Prussia.

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