As the legend has it, when the Saxons defeated Charlemagne, King of the Franks, in the 8th century, he fled westward with his troops, only to have his path blocked by the River Main. Suddenly, a deer sprang out of the forest and crossed the river by a ford (Furt). The Franks (Franken) followed the deer across the river and thus escaped slaughter by the Saxons. Overjoyed at their salvation, Charlemagne built a town to protect the ford. This town was named Frankenfurt. Each and every resident of Frankfurt knows the story of the king and the deer, but the origins of the town go back much further. Archaeologists have discovered the foundations of buildings which date back over 7,000 years! Frankfurt was occupied by the Romans in the first few centuries AD, then by the Alemanians and later by Charlemagne's Franks. In around 700 AD, a stone church and a palace were built on the site of today's cathedral, the Dom. ----- After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Frankfurt sided with the royalists and was brutally savaged by Napoleonic troops in the following years. After the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire in 1814, the "free city" became the permanent seat of the Council of the German Federation. The first German National Assembly met in the Paulskirche on 18th May 1848. But the passing of a constitution and the choosing of a new German Emperor failed, and the people's rebellion that followed was bloodily suppressed by Prussian troops. ------- During the Prussian-Austrian War, Prussian troops occupied neutral Frankfurt in 1866/7 and burnt the cathedral to the ground. ------ The founding of the Second German Reich in 1870-71 led to a major economic boom in Frankfurt: bridges were built, sewage and water systems installed and industrial enterprises founded. Fantastic buildings such as the Alte Oper, Hauptbahnhof and Städel were erected. The city increased in size and swallowed up many of the surrounding villages and towns. ------ The First World War left Frankfurt largely untouched. Frankfurt University was founded in October 1914, and the trade fair was reestablished in 1920. In the following years, the Waldstadion stadium, racetrack, main market hall and airport were built. ------- The global depression took its toll on the city during the 1930s. On 12th March 1933, the Nazis took over, and the deportation and extermination of Frankfurt's Jewish community began in 1941. Frankfurt was heavily bombed by the Allies during the latter years of the War, which ended when American troops moved into Frankfurt on 26th March 1945. ------- In the rebuilding period which followed the War, Frankfurt received a new face. Over 150,000 flats were built, as too were industrial complexes and hundreds of high-rises in the Banking Quarter. ------ In 1949, Frankfurt lost out to Bonn in the race to become the capital of West Germany. But this did nothing to halt the city's rapid development into an international economic metropolis. With over 400 banks (including the headquarters of the German Bundesbank and the European Central Bank) and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, Frankfurt has become one of the world's most important financial centres.