HILDESHEIM, a town and episcopal see in the Prussian province of Hanover, at the north foot of the Harz mountains, on the right bank of the Innerste, 18 m. S.E. of Hanover by railway, and on the main line from Berlin, via Magdeburg to Cologne. Pop. (1933) 62,50o.
Hildesheim owes its rise and prosperity to the fact that in 822 it was made the seat of the bishopric which Charlemagne had founded at Elze a few years before. St. Bernward, bishop from 993 to 1022, walled the town, and stimulated the art of working in metals. In the r 3th century Hildesheim became a free city of the empire; in 1249 it received municipal rights and about the same time it joined the Hanseatic league. Its bishops gradually became practically independent, and carried on wars with neigh bouring princes, especially with the house of Brunswick-Luneburg, under whose protection Hildesheim placed itself several times. The extent of their lands depended on the fortune of war, but at the beginning of the i9th century the extent of the prince bishopric was 682 sq.m. In 18o1 the bishopric was secularized and in 1813 it was transferred to Hanover. In 1866, along with Hanover, it was annexed by Prussia. In 1803 a new bishopric of Hildes heim, a spiritual organization only, was established, and this has jurisdiction over all the Roman Catholic churches in the centre of north Germany.
The town consists of an old and a new part, and is surrounded by ramparts. Its streets contain many old houses with overhang ing upper storeys and adorned wooden facades. The Roman Catholic cathedral (mid. 11th century) occupies the site of a building of the early 9th century. The Romanesque church of St. Godehard was built in the r 2th century and restored in the i9th. The church of St. Michael, founded by Bishop Bernward early in the 11th century and restored after injury by fire in 1186, con tains a unique painted ceiling of the 12th century, the sarcophagus and monument of Bishop Bernward, and a bronze font; it is now a Protestant parish church, but the crypt is used by the Roman Catholics. The church of the Magdalene possesses two can delabra, a gold cross, and various other works in metal by Bishop Bernward; and the Lutheran church of St. Andrew has a choir dating from 1389. In the suburb of Moritzberg there is an abbey church founded in 1040, the only pure columnar basilica in north Germany.
The chief secular buildings are the town-hall (Rathaus), which dates from the 15th century and was restored in 1883-92, adorned with frescoes illustrating the history of the city ; the Tempelher renhaus, in Late Gothic, erroneously said to have been built by the Knights Templars ; the Knochenhaueramthaus, formerly the gild-house of the butchers, restored after a fire in 1884, and prob ably the finest specimen of a wooden building in Germany; the Michaelis monastery, used as a lunatic asylum ; and the old Car thusian monastery. The buildings of Trinity hospital, partly dat ing from the 14th century, are now a factory; and the Wedekind haus (1S98) is now a savings-bank. Hildesheim is the seat of considerable industry. Its chief productions are sugar, tobacco and cigars, stoves, machines, vehicles, rubber and gutta percha, paper, oil, agricultural imnlements and bricks. Other trades are brewing and tanning.