1 Ducat

Cologne's civic ducat series of this period was produced while the city navigated an extraordinary geopolitical tightrope — nominally within the Holy Roman Empire yet fiercely protective of its status as a Free Imperial City, a standing it had held since 1475. The Thirty Years' War ended in 1648 mid-way through this issue's run, and the Peace of Westphalia was actually signed and celebrated within the Empire that Cologne sat at the commercial heart of.

The city's mint right was a hard-won privilege, and these ducats served trade along the Rhine at a moment when confidence in struck coinage was badly shaken by decades of Kipper und Wipper debasement earlier in the century.