Germany's Roman foundation and the city of the Fugger banking dynasty — where the world's oldest social housing project (the Fuggerei, 1516) still charges the original rent of 88 cents a year, the Augsburg Confession defined the terms of the Protestant Reformation, and a family of cloth merchants rose to become the bankers who financed the Holy Roman Emperors and the Spanish crown
Augsburg (300,000; metro 600,000) is one of Germany's oldest cities, founded as Augusta Vindelicum around 15 BCE. In the 15th–16th centuries Augsburg became Europe's most powerful banking centre through the Fugger and Welser dynasties, who financed the Habsburg emperors and built the world's first social housing complex. The Fuggerei (1516), a walled settlement of 67 houses with 142 apartments, still houses around 150 people who pay a rent of €0.88 per year — the same one Rhenish guilder charged in 1521 — in exchange for three daily prayers for the Fugger family. Augsburg's Renaissance Rathau…
Augusta Vindelicum was founded around 15 BCE as the chief city of the Roman province of Raetia, and grew into the largest Roman city north of the Alps at the time of Tiberius. The Fugger family, starting as weavers in the 14th century, rose through copper and silver mining to banking, and Jacob Fugger the Rich (1459–1525) became the wealthiest private individual in European history — at his peak his fortune is estimated to have equalled several percent of all European GDP. Jacob Fugger personally financed the bribery payments that secured the election of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor in 151…