The Holy Roman Empire

Voltaire quipped that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, and for much of its history the Holy Roman Empire looked less like a state than a federation of several hundred territories under an elected emperor. Duchies, prince-bishoprics, free imperial cities and tiny knightly estates each ran their own affairs while sharing courts, a diet and a crown. That arrangement lasted from the tenth century to 1806 and left central Europe with its dense pattern of regional capitals, its tradition of federalism, and a religious map drawn by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Modern Germany, Austria, Czechia and Switzerland all grew from its pieces.

At its largest, around 1050, the empire covered about 1 million square kilometers, from the North Sea and the Baltic coast to central Italy and from the Meuse and the Rhône to the Oder. Its core was the German-speaking lands of the North European Plain, the Rhine valley and the uplands of central Germany, with the Kingdom of Bohemia to the east and the Kingdom of Italy, centered on Lombardy and Tuscany, across the Alps. The Alps ran through its middle, and the Rhine and the Danube carried its trade. Over the centuries it lost most of its Italian and Burgundian fringes. Its lands lie today mainly in Germany, Austria, Czechia, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Slovenia, with parts of eastern France, northern Italy and western Poland.

The imperial title in the West was revived when Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne emperor in 800, and the continuous line of emperors dates from the crowning of the German king Otto I in 962. Emperors were chosen by a small college of prince-electors, a system formalized by the Golden Bull of 1356, and from 1438 the office stayed almost without a break in the Habsburg family. The Protestant Reformation, launched in Wittenberg in 1517, split the empire along religious lines, and the Thirty Years' War of 1618 to 1648 devastated much of it. After defeats by Napoleon and the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, Francis II laid down the imperial crown on August 6, 1806, dissolving the empire. The Austrian Empire, Prussia and the German Confederation inherited its role.

• The Roman Empire
  The Mediterranean state whose roads, law and Latin still shape three continents claimed succession from
• Bohemia
  The mountain-ringed heart of Czechia, a kingdom for more than seven centuries included
• Central Europe
  A region whose membership has always been a political argument located in
• Austria-Hungary
  The Habsburg dual monarchy of a dozen nations, dissolved at the end of World War I succeeded by
• The Kingdom of Prussia
  The north German kingdom that unified Germany and then vanished from the map succeeded by
• Austria
  An Alpine republic at the heart of old Europe today part of
• Czechia
  The landlocked heart of Central Europe, crowned by Bohemia and Moravia today part of
• Germany
  Europe's economic engine at the continent's crossroads today part of