It was a key player in the postal services in Europe during the 16th century, until the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, and became well known as the owner of breweries and commissioner of several castles.

The earliest records place them in Almenno in the Val Brembana around 1200,[1] before they fled to the more distant village of Cornello to escape feuding between Bergamo's Colleoni (Guelf) and Suardi (Ghibelline) families.

Johann Baptista was briefly succeeded by his eldest son, Franz II von Taxis (1514-1543), after whose untimely death the family split into two further branches.

Raymond married into Spanish nobility, and his eldest son Juan de Tassis was created Count of Villamediana in 1603 by Phillip III.

The Spanish line of the family became extinct with Juan de Tassis, 2nd Count of Villamediana, a poet who died in mysterious circumstances in 1622.

When the Brussels line was raised to the hereditary status of counts in 1624, they needed illustrious lineage to legitimize their intended further ascension to the high nobility.

Alexandrine von Taxis commissioned genealogists to "clarify" their origin, who until then had only been considered a family descending from medieval knights who had become merchants.

They now claimed, albeit without documentary evidence, that they descended from the Italian noble family Della Torre, or Torriani, who had ruled in Milan and Lombardy until 1311.

[10] The Brussels line moved to Frankfurt in 1703 because of the War of the Spanish Succession; their new family seat built from 1731 was the Palais Thurn und Taxis.

Emperor Charles VII appointed Alexander Ferdinand, 3rd Prince of Thurn and Taxis, Principal Commissioner (Lord Chancellor) of the Imperial Diet in 1743.

Only then did the Thurn und Taxis rule their own principality of the empire for 20 years, but their main source of income remained the Imperial Reichspost.

The family's brewery was sold to the Paulaner Group of Munich in 1996, but it still produces beer under the brand of Thurn und Taxis.