"Vicus Bonnensis" - settlement of merchants and craftsmen

In 753, King Pippin crossed the Rhine during his Saxon campaign. In 921, King Henry I came to meet Charles III, known as the Charles the Simple. From a ship anchored in the middle of the Rhine, the two rulers laid down the boundaries of the Eastern and western Kingdom of the Franks.

There was also a royal mint in Bonnburg. Coins may well have been minted here but the money itself was earned in “Vicus Bonnensis”, a settlement of tradesmen and craftsmen in a section of what is now Remigusstraße, which developed close to the Cassius convent built over the martyr’s graves. A colourful assortment of travelling traders with an air of adventure about them was to be found in this “visus”. We know of one of them. His name was Freosbaldus and he was probably of Anglo-Saxon origin and had accumulated a vast fortune.