Spires

Spires (German, Speyer, anc. Augusta Nemetum, or Noviomagus), an old town on the left bank of the Rhine, 21 miles south of Worms and in the Bavarian Palatinate. Captured by Julius Caesar in 47 B.C., it became the seat of a bishop in the 4th century, and of an imperial palace under the Franks about 850. From 1527 to 1689 the supreme court of the empire was established here. All the ancient buildings perished by fire in the latter year except the grand Romanesque basilica, dating from 1030. Only a few fragments remain of the Retscher, or imperial palace, where the Diet of Spires met in 1529, and gave to the Reformers the title of Protestants.