SPETER, also SPEIET (Fr. Spires), the capital of Rhenish Bavaria (the former Pala tinate), and one of the oldest towns in Germany, stands at the influx of the Speyerbach into the Rhine, 14 m. s.w. of Heldelberfr, and 23 n. of Carlsruhe. It is connected with Mannheim, and thence with the rest of Germany, by railway. The principal building is the cathedral (founded 1030), which contains the tombs of numerous emperors' of Germany. Since 1856 it has been wholly renewed, and is the grandest specimen of Romanesque architecture in Europe. It' has a hall of Roman antiquities discovered LL the Palatinate, and is adorned with thirty magnificent frescos by Schraudolph.
Except the cathedral and a ruined wall, the sole relic of the imperial palace in which twenty-nine diets were held—at one of which (1529) the reformers made their famous "protest," and got for themselves the name of Protestants (see PROTESTANT)—Spey( r does not contain a single ancient building. This is owing to the fact that in the Orleans succession war—well called by the Germans the 21fordbrenner which the i whole Palatinate was savagely wasted, Speyer was taken by the French. its driven out, and the city blown up with gunpowder, and burned to the ground. Only the cathedral resisted the barbarous efforts to mine it. Everything else was reduced to rub bish, and for long years the noble old pile overlooked nothing hut a melanchely waste of -ruins. In 1794 it was wasted by the French under Custine, and has never recovered
from these calamities. Speyer manufactures vinegar and tobacco, and has some transit trade on the Rhine. Pop. '75, 14,100, of whom about two-fifths are Catholics.
Speyer is the Noriomagus of the Romans, and was the capital city of the Nemetes, a German people. Speyer was probably the native name from the first, for in some of the later Roman notices it is called Oivitas Nemetum, td est Spira. The name is derived from the stream, or bath (Speyerbach), which here flows into the Rhine. A Christian com munity appears to have been established here as early as 150-200 A.D., and it was cer tainly the seat of a bishop about 300 A.D. The German emperors had here a pfa'z (palace, Lat. palatiam, whence the former name of the region of which it was the capi tal, the Pfalz or Palatinate), in which they often resided. By them the town was made a free city of the empire; and having obtained the monopoly of the carrying-trade up and down the Rhine, it rapidly rose in wealth and importance. The ReichskamtnergerNt. or imperial chamber of justice, the highest court of the German empire, was held here for 200 years, until removed to Wetzlar in 1689.