Saalfeld () is a town in Germany, capital of the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district of Thuringia. It is best known internationally as the ancestral seat of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha branch of the Saxon House of Wettin. Geography The town is situated in the valley of the Saale River north of the Thuringian Highland, south of the German cultural centre Weimar. Saalfeld station is currently served by Intercity-Express trains running from Berlin to Munich. Saalfeld has 28,000 inhabitants. Together with neighbouring Rudolstadt and Bad Blankenburg, Saalfeld forms a tri-city area with a population of about 70,000. The local mountain is the Kulm, which is 481.9 metres above sea level. History Saalfeld is one of the historic towns of Thuringia, possibly founded by the 7th century around a Thuringii (Gothic) fortress today called Hoher Schwarm or Sorbenburg (Sorbs' Castle). The area was first mentioned in an 899 deed. Kitzerstein Castle standing on an eminence above the Saale River, was said to have been originally erected by the German King Henry the Fowler, although the present-day building was not built before the 16th century. In 1012 the last Ottonian emperor Henry II ceded the former Carolingian Kaiserpfalz to Count Palatine Ezzo of Lotharingia, whose daughter Richeza bequested it to the Archbishops of Cologne. According to the local chronicler Lambert of Hersfeld, Archbishop Anno II of Cologne in 1071 established a Benedictine abbey here, which quickly became an ecclesiastical centre in eastern Thuringia but was destroyed during the German Peasants' War in 1526. A Franciscan monastery was established about 1250, which also was dissolved during the Protestant Reformation. The Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick Barbarossa had ordered the layout of an Imperial city, parts of its medieval walls and bastions are preserved up to today. Nevertheless, the citizens in 1208 had to receive town privileges from the hands of the Counts of Schwarzburg as their feudal lords. House of Wettin In 1389 the town finally was acquired by Landgrave Balthasar of Thuringia, a member of the House of Wettin. Saalfeld's economy prospered from surrounding mines, transport on the Saale River as well as from fishing (expressed by the barbels in the town's coat of arms). The Wettin rulers had the Gothic Saint John hall church erected at the site of a Romanesque predecessor building until 1514. The Gothic town hall was completed in 1537. The ruling dynasty reached its height of importance, when in 1423 all Wettin