The project focuses on the study of the approximately 900 late medieval and early modern residential cities of the Holy Roman Empire, which formed an important element of the European urbanisation processes between the 14th and the early 19th century, the fusion of urban and aristocratic forms of life, the development of the feudal rule and pre-modern statehood. In an interdisciplinary collaboration of social and economic history, regional history, constitutional history, and the history of art, the emphasis is on the already quantitatively dominant small conditions outside the large residential cities, brought together in a four-volume handbook. In addition, exemplary studies with a concentration on history and art history deal with specific questions. For example, the former residence of the Dukes of Pomerania, Barth, on the Baltic coast or the comital Mansfeld on the edge of the Harz, the small town of Rappoltsweiler of the Lords of Rappoltstein in Alsace or the prince-bishop’s Brixen in South Tyrol are examined. The underlying thesis of the research is that the social forms to be investigated, such as ‘town’ and ‘rule’, ‘state’, and ‘court’, were less antagonistic than complementary and integrative in orientation.

As a project of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony, the project is funded by the Federal Republic of Germany and the state of Schleswig-Holstein within the framework of the Academies’ Programme.