On a 16th century map (‘‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’’ (Antwerp, 1570) Ortelius’) of the world, for the german speaking area, three cities are listed. Wien, Danzig, and Ausburch.
Ausburch is just above the alps in extreme Southern Bavaria or maybe Switzerland.
But I can’t find any listing of it.
So what is it, where is it, and is it still as happening a place as it was in the days of Maximilian II?
Could it be an old spelling of Augsburg?
ETA: And beaten to the post by Mops.
Here’s a contemporary usage of “Ausburch” (in a Dutch passage; the French uses “Ausbourch” and the Latin of course goes back to the original name with “Augusta[nam]”) from a Google Book search.
Does anyone know if modern Dutch or French uses those names?
From the Dutch and French Wikipedias: Augsburg and Augsbourg. I can testify that at least Augsbourg is the current French spelling of this city’s name.
Given the geographic description you give, we can be positive that what is meant is indeed the present-day city of Augsburg, 50 kilometres of which I was born, grew up and currently am. It’s one of the oldest cities in Germany, founded by Romans somewhat between 10 and 20 CE IIRC, was the centre of German Renaissance arts and architecture, and the heart of the trans-European banking and trade network of the Fugger family in the 16th century.
It’s now a city of 250,000, the commercial and administrative heart of the region in which it lies (Swabia, Schwaben in German, one of the seven administrative districts into which Bavaria is divided). It has a university, industry, a second-division soccer team with ongoing aspirations to be promoted to first division, but in the past decades sort of evolved into an almost-suburb of Munich, which is about a 30 minute train ride away and where a lot of Augsburg people commute to.
One of the few things I remember from the history of modern europe class I took in college is that in 1555 the Treaty of Augsburg was signed which temporarily ended the religious wars in europe by providing that the official religion of a state would be determined by its ruler. This is the first time in more than 50 years that I have had occasion to mention that fact.
There are other curious cities marked on that map. In North America, there are Ipedra, Modano, and Canagadi.
Yer a big fella then.
I don’t really take proud in it since I didn’t contribute to being born in the Augsburg area, but it actually is a nice place.
And Augsburg celebrates this with a special holiday, the Friedensfest(peace festivity) on Aug. 8th every year. Imagine that, getting a day off just by living in the right city! 
I hear this pisses off a lot of Augsburgian: their city goes back to the Romans and was a major center when Munich was still an insignificant village (that would have stayed that way probably if not for a little bit of bridge-burning), and now they are relegated to minor status as “most-northern suburb of Munich” in most people’s mind. History is unfair!
This makes Augsburg the city in Germany with the highest number of public holidays (it’s located in Bavaria, so it gets all the other Bavarian holidays as well, and Bavaria is the richest state in holidays of them all). It also makes for a trap sometimes used in legal examinations in Bavaria, whereby certain deadlines end on 8 August and the whole fictitious story is set in Augsburg. The trap is that legal deadlines ending on a holiday are prolonged until the next working day, which many candidates miss.
Now THAT is a useless bit of trivia about Augsburg…
Is it also where the House of Hapsburg originated? Wiki tells me “Habsburgo” (which we also sometimes spell as Ausburgo, Asburgo or Hasburgo) originated from “Habichtsburg” and that this is a castle in Swabia, but doesn’t give a more specific location.
ETA: fun, fun! That was from Spanish Wiki; English Wiki says the name is actually older than the castle and that the castle is in Aargau Canton, Switzerland. Seems to make sense to have the big meeting in “Ausburg” if it was Emperor Charles’ personal fief, though.
No, the Habsburgs are not from Augsburg, which, in its heyday, was a free self-governing city with a republican constitution and thus not a stronghold of any aristocratic dynasty - the Fugger bankers with their close ties to Augsburg were ennobled, but they are originally not an aristocratic family. The Habsburg castle from which the dynasty takes its name is located in present-day Switzerland, which, before Switzerland split off from the Holy Roman Empire, was considered Swabia.
Thank you, Schnitte.
Actually it was in a borderland between the lands of the old Kingdom of Burgundy ( Arles ) and the Duchy of Swabia, where the Aargau formed an at times disputed territory between the two. You can see Hapsburg Castle here on the edge of the Frickgau and the Aargau. I’ll note that all of that green, yellow and pink was eventually inherited by the Hapsburgs ( before they gained the imperial throne ), while that orange color was the origin of the future monarchs of Italy.
