Bamberg is a town in Bavaria (Bayern), Germany. It is located in Upper Franconia on the Regnitz River, close to its confluence with the Main River.
During the post-Roman centuries of Germanic migration and settlement, the region afterwards included in the Diocese of Bamberg was inhabited for the most part by Slavs. The town, first mentioned in 902, grew up by the castle (Babenberch) which gave its name to the Babenberg family. On their extinction it passed to the Saxon house. The area was christianized chiefly by the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Fulda, and the land was under the spiritual authority of the Diocese of Würzburg.
In 1007, Holy Roman Emperor Henry II made Bamberg, a family inheritance, the seat of a separate diocese. The emperor's purpose in this was to make the Diocese of Würzburg less unwieldy in size and to give Christianity a firmer footing in the districts of Franconia, east of Bamberg. In 1008, after long negotiations with the Bishops of Würzburg and Eichstätt, who were to cede portions of their dioceses, the boundaries of the new diocese were defined, and Pope John XVIII granted the papal confirmation in the same year. The new cathedral was consecrated May 6, 1012, and in 1017 Henry II founded on Mount St. Michael, near Bamberg, a Benedictine abbey for the training of the clergy. The emperor and his wife Cunigunde gave large temporal possessions to the new diocese, and it received many privileges out of which grew the secular power of the bishop (cf. Weber in Historisches Jahrbuch der Gorresgesellschaft for 1899, 326-345 and 617-639). Pope Benedict VIII during his visit to Bamberg (1020) placed the diocese in direct dependence on the Holy See. For a short time Bamberg was the centre of the Holy Roman Empire. Henry and his wife Cunigunde were both buried in the cathedral.
The Old Town of Bamberg is included in the UNESCO World Heritage, since it retained its medieval look. Some of the main sights are:
Cathedral (1237), with the tombs of emperor Henry II and Pope Clement II.
Alte Hofhaltung, residence of the bishops in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Neue Residenz, residence of the bishops after the 17th century.
Old Town Hall (1386), built in the mid of the Regnitz River, accessible by two bridges.
Klein-Venedig ("Little Venice"), a colony of picturesque fishermen's houses along the Regnitz.