Among æsthetic people in general, Düsseldorf is revered—or was revered, though the time has long since passed—for that style of pictorial art known to the world as the Düsseldorf School.
A remarkably good collection of pictures remains in its art gallery to remind us of the fame of Düsseldorf as an art centre, but to-day its art has become "old-fashioned," and the gay little metropolis has many, if more worldly, counter attractions.
Düsseldorf takes its name from the little river Düssel which joins the Rhine at this point.
The French guide-books call Düsseldorf the "plus coquettes des bords du Rhin"; and so it really is, for few tourists go there for its[{305}] churches alone, though they are by no means squalid or inferior.
The city was the residence of the Counts, afterward the Dukes, of Berg—for it was made a duchy by the Emperor Wenceslaus—from the end of the thirteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth.
In 1806 Napoleon made it the capital of a new Grand Duchy of Berg in favour of Joachim Murat. By the treaty of 1815 Düsseldorf fell to Prussia, and became the chief town of the regency of Düsseldorf, and the seat of a superior court of justice.
Occupying the site that it does, on the banks of a great waterway, the city naturally became the centre of an important commerce.
Düsseldorf is the birthplace of many who have borne great names; of the philosopher Jacobi and his poet brother; the Baron de Hompesch, the last grand master of the Order of Malta; Von Ense, the eminent litterateur; the poet Heinrich Heine (who died at Paris in 1855), and the painters Cornelius, Lenzen, and Achenbach.
The principal church edifice is that dedicated to St. Lambert, the Hofkirche. It has a strong and hardy tower, very tall, and surmounted by a slate-covered spire. The ogival[{306}] style predominates, and the fabric dates mostly from the fourteenth century. Its chief feature is its choir, which is far more ample and beautiful than the nave. The rest of the edifice fails to express any very high ideals of church-building.
At the foot of the apside, behind the choir, is a mausoleum erected in the seventeenth century for the elector, John Wilhelm, who died in 1690.