ESSLINGEN  , a

town of Germany, in the kingdom of Wurttemberg, in a fertile district on the Neckar, 9 M . S.E. from Stuttgart, on the railway to Ulm . Pop . (1905) 29,750 . It is surrounded by medieval walls with towers and bastions, and has thirteen suburbs, one lying on an island in the river . On a commanding height above the town lies the old citadel . The inner town has an old (1430) and a new Rathaus, the latter, formerly a palace, an exceedingly handsome edifice . The church of Our Lady (Frauenkirche) is a fine Gothic building of the 15th century, and has a beautifully sculptured doorway and a lattice spire 240 ft. high . The church of St Dionysius dated from the 13th century, and possesses a fine screen and a ciborium of 1486 . Esslingen possesses several schools, a theatre and a richly endowed hospital, while its municipal archives contain much valuable literature bearing especially on the period of the Reformation . The town has railway, machine and electrical works; cloth, gloves and buttons are also manufactured here, and there are spinning-mills . There is a large lithographic establishment, and a consider-able trade is done in wine and fruit, the wines of Esslingen being very famous .

Esslingen, which

dates from the 8th century, became a town in 886 . It was soon a place of importance; it became a free imperial city in 1209 and was surrounded with walls by order of the emperor Frederick II . Its liberty was frequently threatened by the rulers of Wurttemberg, but it did not become part of that country until 18oz . See K . H . S . Pfaff, Geschichte der Reichsstadt Esslingen (Esslingen, 1852) ; and Strohmfeld, Esslingen in Wort and Bild (Esslingen, 1902) .