Tourist office
Harz Tourism Agency, Markt St. 45, 38640 Goslar, Germany, T: 0049-5321-34040, F: 0049-5321-340466, E: infoatharzinfo.de, (http://www.harzinfo.de/pa...).
Unesco world heritage status
This might be a reason why the Rammelsberg Mine and Town have been so uniquely preserved that they hold UNESCO World Heritage Status.
Goslar is the Harz region's festival town, culminating in the annual award of the "Imperial Ring" (http://www.kaiserring.net).
Town information
Goslar was founded in 922 AD, although it is widely assumed that it has been settled since pre-Roman times. The town is famed for its magnificent gates and ramparts, the medieval Imperial Palace, Romanesque churches, its half timbered guild houses, the ancient Rammelsberg ore mine... and its witches, the last of which was burned at the stake in 1657 AD. In medieval times the city was a major producer of armouries and coins-- the raw ores for their manufacture came from the Rammelsberg mine just outside the city's walls.
A brief history of goslar
What, Ram + Goat = Goslar?Not quite.... ! According to the legend, Ramm, a knight to Henry's son Otto the Great, tied his horse to a tree, half way up the Rammelsberg, to continue hunting in the undergrowth. In anticipation of the return of its owner, the horse scraped with its hoof in the ground laying open a ledge of silver so rich that it took over a millennium to mine. Hence the mountain and mine were called the Rammelsberg, after Otto's knight Ramm. As the wife of knight Ramm was called Gosa, they named the town Goslar in her honor.
Emperors, Dukes, and the TownsfolkEssentially Goslar was a Free Imperial City, which came under direct control of the Emperor and there were no regional feudal overlords, who were in charge of the city until the end of the Thirty's Year War. Thus the citizens were largely left to their own devices, since the emperors had mostly better things to do than to sit in their Imperial Palace at Goslar. There were several other imperial palaces throughout the Holy Roman Empire, where the emperors held court. The only problem for the city's craftsmen was that their Free Imperial City ended right behind the city's walls. Unfortunately for them, the mine they depended upon, for the delivery of the ores, was immediately outside these very city walls. So they had to lease the rights to the mine from even such regional feudal overlords, the Dukes of Brunswick, who would have fancied it, if the city was theirs. This inevitably let to regular skirmishes between the Dukes and their men on the one side, and the burghers on the other side, which were not resolved until the end of the Thirty's Year War in 1642 AD with the Goslar Accord.
Goethe's Goslar Gothic Ghosts. With the onset of the Reformation in 1517 AD Goslar has escaped the interest of the emperor, and its riches declined so that Goethe, Germany's national polymath, writes in 1777 during his visit to Goslar: "Imperial City, which rots 'inside' and 'with' its privileges!"