Worms,

Worms, an ancient and interesting town of Hesse-Darmstadt, in a highly fruitful district on the left bank of the Rhine, 25 miles SW. of Darmstadt by rail. Among its churches the chief is the cathedral, a massive Romanesque building in the Byzantine style, with two cupolas and four towers, founded in the 8th, rebuilt in the 11th and 12th centuries, and carefully restored in the last quarter of the 19th century. On a hill near the church called the Liebfrauenkirche a highly esteemed wine, called Liebfrauenmilch, is grown. The synagogue is one of the oldest in Germany. The town-house was restored in 1884. There are manufactures of soluble glass, soap, bone-dust, printing and other machinery, and furniture; the making of patent leather employs 1200 hands; tobacco is also manufactured, and a trade in the wines and the agricultural produce of the vicinity is carried on. The town has a busy river port. Pop. (1880) 19,005; (1895) 28,624—8700 being Catholics. Worms is one of the oldest cities of Germany (though held by the French in 1801-14); in it is laid the scene of the Nibelungenlied (q.v.). It was occupied by the Romans, made their capital by the Burgundians, destroyed by Attila, and rebuilt by Clovis. It was frequently the residence of Charlemagne and his successors, and was the place of convocation of many German diets, including that of 1521, at which Luther defended himself before Charles V. and the princes of the empire, commemorated by an imposing monument to Luther erected at Worms in 1868. It was an imperial free city, and its bishopric was all but a separate state. The industry and commerce of Worms were great during the middle ages, and its population, as far back as the time of the Hohenstaufens, averaged 60,000, and amounted to 30,000 even at the close of the Thirty Years' War; but it was almost wholly destroyed by the French in the destructive war of 1689, and, though soon after it was rebuilt on a smaller scale, it has never recovered its former prosperity. Here, in 1743, an offensive and defensive alliance was entered into by Great Britain and Austria with Sardinia.