The story
Noerdlingen Mess in Noerdlingen
Nordlingen's Pfingstmesse was first documented in 1219 and grew into one of Upper Germany's most important medieval trade fairs, with a fifteenth-century catchment reaching from the Netherlands and Alsace to Vienna and Polish lands. Its commercial significance declined after 1492 as trade routes shifted, but the fair survives, still beginning the second Saturday after Pentecost and running ten days, now recognised as the largest folk festival in northern Swabia.
The Nordlinger Pfingstmesse was first documented in 1219, and within a comparatively short time it developed into a long-distance trading fair of genuine supraregional importance, drawing merchants from a remarkably wide catchment area that by the fifteenth century stretched to Alsace, the Middle Rhine and the Netherlands in one direction, and to Saxony, Polish lands, Linz and Vienna in the other, crossing the Alpine passes in between.