It was a Free Imperial City from 1276 to 1803 and the home of the patrician Fugger and Welser families that dominated European banking in the 16th century.

According to Behringer, in the sixteenth century it became "the dominant centre of early capitalism", having benefited from being part of the Kaiserliche Reichspost system as "the location of the most important post office within the Holy Roman Empire" and the city's close connection to Maximilian I.

In the south extends the Lechfeld, an outwash plain of the post ice age between the rivers Lech and Wertach, where rare primeval landscapes were preserved.

The Augsburg city forest and the Lech valley heaths today rank among the most species-rich middle European habitats.

Frictions between the city-state and the prince-bishops were to remain frequent however, particularly after Augsburg became Protestant and curtailed the rights and freedoms of Catholics.

The Fugger family donated the Fuggerei part of the city devoted to housing for needy citizens in 1516, which remains in use today.

[17] Augsburg's economic boom years occurred during the 15th and 16th centuries thanks to the bank and metal businesses of the merchant families Fugger, Welser and Hochstetter.

Monopolies were considered criminal in contemporary laws and these families' practices were criticised by Martin Luther himself, but as Emperor Charles V needed their financial assistance, he cancelled the charge in the 1530s.

The prolific printers of Augsburg also made the city the largest producer of German-language books in the Holy Roman Empire.

[citation needed] Augsburg benefitted majorly from the establishment and expansion of the Kaiserliche Reichspost in the late 15th and early 16th century.

This postal system, which was the first modern postal service in the world, was created through negotiations and agreements between the Taxis family represented by Franz von Taxis [de] and the early Habsburgs monarches, notably Maximilian I, his son Philip the Handsome and grandson Charles V.[22][23] Even when the Habsburg empire began to extend to other parts of Europe, Maximilian's loyalty to Augsburg, where he conducted a lot of his endeavours, meant that the imperial city became "the dominant centre of early capitalism" of the sixteenth century, and "the location of the most important post office within the Holy Roman Empire".

From Maximilian's time, as the "terminuses of the first transcontinental post lines" began to shift from Innsbruck to Venice and from Brussels to Antwerp, in these cities, the communication system and the news market started to converge.

As the Fuggers as well as other trading companies based their most important branches in these cities, these traders gained access to these systems as well (despite a widely circulated theory which holds that the Fuggers themselves operated their own communication system, in reality they relied upon the imperial posts, presumably from the 1490s onwards, as official members of the court of Maximilian I).

Following the 1592–1593 plague epidemic, cities in southeast Germany entered a period of inflation, marked by brutal witch hunts in urban areas.

[27] In 1686 the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I formed the League of Augsburg, also known as the "Grand Alliance" after England joined in 1689.

The coalition consisted at various times of Austria, Bavaria, Brandenburg, England, the Holy Roman Empire, the Electorate of the Palatinate, Portugal, Savoy, Saxony, Spain, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic.

[citation needed] The Reichsdeputationshauptschluss or the Final Recess of 1803, saw the annexation of nearly all of the 51 Free Imperial Cities, excepting Augsburg and five others.

However, when the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806, Napoleon encouraged his German allies to annex their smaller neighbours, and Augsburg lost its independence.

When the Avro Lancaster bomber was new in service, the RAF sent 12 at low level to bomb the factory in daylight, on 17 April 1942.

[28][29] In 1941 Rudolf Hess, without Adolf Hitler's permission, secretly took off from a local Augsburg airport and flew to Scotland, crashing in Eaglesham, to the south of Glasgow.

His objective was to meet the Duke of Hamilton in an attempt to mediate the end of the European front of World War II and join sides for the upcoming Russian Campaign.

The Infanterie Regiment 40 remained in Augsburg until the end of the war, finally surrendering to the United States on 28 April 1945 when the U.S. Army occupied the city.

After the transfer to Bavaria in 1806, Augsburg was ruled by a Magistrate with two mayors, supported by an additional council of "Community Commissioners": the Gemeindebevollmächtige.

The most recent city council election was held on 15 March 2020, and the results were as follows: Augsburg is located in the Wahlkreis 251 Augsburg-Stadt constituency.

Indirectly elected to the Bundestag to adhere to the Landesliste were Ulrike Bahr for the SPD and Claudia Roth for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen.

[34] Augsburg was built on top of an aquifer fed by the Lech and Wertach rivers, which provided purified groundwater that ran through the city through springs and streams.

Hauptbahnhof is on the Munich–Augsburg and Ulm–Augsburg lines and is connected by ICE and IC services to Munich, Berlin, Dortmund, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Stuttgart.

Many global market leaders namely MAN, EADS or KUKA produce high technology products like printing systems, large diesel engines, industrial robots or components for the Airbus A380 and the Ariane carrier rocket.

The club, nicknamed the Fuggerstädter or simply as FCA, reached the last 32 in the 2015–16 Europa League with a 1–0 aggregate defeat to Liverpool.

The WWK ARENA, nicknamed the "Anfield of the B17 Highway" following the Liverpool UEL match, opened in July 2009 and also hosted games of the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup.