Electoral Palatinate

The County Palatine of the Rhine , later the Electorate of the Palatinate or simply Electoral Palatinate , was a territory in the Holy Roman Empire administered by the Count Palatine of the Rhine. Its rulers served as prince-electors from time immemorial, were noted as such in a papal letter of 1261, and were confirmed as electors by the Golden Bull of 1356.

The fragmented territory stretched from the left bank of the Upper Rhine, from the Hunsrück mountain range in what is today the Palatinate region in the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate and the adjacent parts of the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine to the opposite territory on the east bank of the Rhine in present-day Hesse and Baden-Württemberg up to the Odenwald range and the southern Kraichgau region, containing the capital cities of Heidelberg and Mannheim.

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