Mapping ruler itineraries in the Holy Roman Empire (919-1519)

reconstructing the itineraries of the kings and emperors of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) between AD 919 and 1519. At the time, the HRE’s center of political was not fixed but happened to be whereever the current king or emperor was traveling, with centralized institutions developing only slowly after the death of Maximilian I in 1519. The data includes 25 German kings and emperors of the HRE. We reconstruct their itineraries from 72’665 historical documents or an average of 143 documents per year. The full data is accessible via an interactive online platform, can be downloaded as .csv here, and is fully described in this article.

Citation

When using this dataset in your research, please include the following reference:

Müller-Crepon, Carl, Clara Neupert-Wentz, Andrej Kokkonen & Jørgen Møller. 2025. Rulers on the Road: Itinerant Rule in the Holy Roman Empire, AD 919–1519. American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming