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Just 20km north of NErnberg, and now regarded as an integral part of its conurbation,
ERLANGEN
is nevertheless a town with its own distincitve history, traditions and appearance. Following the ending of religious toleration in France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1683, a large number of Huguenots settled here at the invitation of Margrave Christian Ernst of Bayreuth. A new
planned town
of regular streets and squares in the sober Baroque style then current in Protestant circles was built to accommodate them; this was extended to cover the whole of the city when the medieval Altstadt was destroyed by fire twenty years later. The Huguenots, skilled in textiles and leather crafts, established Erlangen's reputation as a major industrial centre, a tradition maintained today by electro-technics and power engineering. Indeed, Erlangen might be regarded almost as a company town of Siemens, were it not for the presence of the university, founded in 1743 and now shared with NErnberg. The presence of so many students ensures an almost continuously lively atmosphere, and helps transform what might otherwise seem a place of specialist appeal.
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