Bayreuth is a town on the Red Main river in Bavaria, Germany and is believed to have been founded by the Counts of Andechs around the mid-12th century; it was first mentioned in 1194 as "Baierrute" in a document by Bishop Otto II of Bamberg-the syllable "-rute" may have meant "Rodung" ("a clearing"), whilst "Baier-" would have indicated "immigrants from the Bavarian region" Villages were later merged into Bayreuth: Seulbitz (in 1035 as the royal Salian estate of Silewize in a document by Emperor Conrad II) and St. Johannis (possibly 1149 as Altentrebgast). Even the district of Altstadt (formerly Altenstadt) west of the town centre must be older than the town of Bayreuth itself. Even older traces of human presence were found in the hamlets of Meyernberg: pieces of pottery and wooden crockery were dated to the 9th century based on their decoration While Bayreuth was previously (1199) referred to as a "villa" ("village"), the term "civitas" ("town") appeared for the first time in a document published in 1231. One can therefore assume that Bayreuth was awarded its town charter between 1200 and 1230. The town was ruled until 1248 by the counts of Andechs-Merania. After they died out in 1260 the burgraves of Nuremberg from the House of Hohenzollern took over the inheritance As early as 1361 Emperor Charles IV conferred on Burgrave Frederick V the right to mint coins for the towns of Bayreuth and Kulmbach In 1398 Bayreuth was partitioned from Nuremberg, becoming the Principality of Bayreuth (German: "Fürstentum Bayreuth"). Until 1604, however, the princely residence and the centre of the territory was the castle of Plassenburg in Kulmbach and as such the territory was officially known as the Principality of Kulmbach. The town of Bayreuth developed slowly and was affected time and again by disasters Bayreuth was first published on a map in 1421 In February 1430, the Hussites devastated Bayreuth and the town hall and churches were razed. Matthäus Merian described this event in 1642 as follows: "In 1430 the Hussites from Bohemia attacked / Culmbach and Barreut / and committed great acts of cruelty / like wild animals / against the common people / and certain individuals. / The priests / monks and nuns they either burnt at the stake / or took them onto the ice of lakes and rivers / (in Franconia and Bavaria) and doused them with cold water / and killed them in a deplorable way / as Boreck reported in the Bohemian Chronicle, page 450"… By 1528, less than ten years after the start of the Reformation, the lords of the Frankish margrave territories switched to the Lutheran faith At its center today is the Richard Wagner Museum in the composer's former home, Villa Wahnfried. Wagner's operas are performed at the Bayreuther Festspielhaus, home of the annual Bayreuth Festival. On the eastern outskirts, the Hermitage Gardens surrounds the Altes Schloß Eremitage palace and the Temple of the Sun (Sonnentempel), honoring the god Apollo [ source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayreuth#History ]