Free imperial city

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In the Holy Roman Empire, the collective term free and imperial cities (German: Freie und Reichsstädte), briefly worded free imperial city (Freie Reichsstadt, Latin: urbs imperialis libera), was used from the 15th century to denote a self-ruling city that had a certain amount of autonomy and was represented in the Imperial Diet.^[1]

An imperial city held the status of imperial immediacy, and was subordinate only to the Holy Roman Emperor, as opposed to a territorial city or town (Landstadt), which was subordinate to a territorial prince – be it an ecclesiastical lord (prince-bishop, prince-abbot), or a secular prince (duke (Herzog), margrave, count (Graf), etc.).