The old town has many fine Renaissance era buildings decorated with exterior frescos and sculpture , as well as the old canton fortress, the Munot.
Schaffhausen is also a railway junction of Swiss and German rail networks. One of the lines connects the town with the nearby Rhine Falls in Neuhausen am Rheinfall , Europe s largest waterfall, a tourist attraction. The official language of Schaffhausen is the Swiss variety of Standard German , but the main spoken language is the local variant of the Alemannic Swiss German dialect.
The town is first mentioned in as Villa Scafhusun. There are at least two theories on the origin of this name:. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Or on a Base Vert issuant from sinister a Semi Castle Argent with tower with entrance from which is issuing a Semi Ram Sable. Schaffhausen was a city state in the Middle Ages , documented to have struck its own coins from Perhaps as early as , certainly in , it was an imperial free city , while the first seal dates from The powers of the abbot were gradually limited and in the Emperor Rudolf I gave the town a charter of liberties.
In the emperor Louis of Bavaria pledged it to the Habsburgs. In the early 15th century, Habsburg power over the city waned. In and Schaffhausen Massacre , two pogroms occurred in the city. As a result of the ban and Frederick's need of money, Schaffhausen was able to buy its independence from the Habsburgs in The city allied with six of the Swiss confederates in and allied with a further two Uri and Unterwalden in Schaffhausen became a full member of the Old Swiss Confederacy in The Reformation was adopted, initially, in and completely in The town was heavily damaged during the Thirty Years' War by the passage of Swedish Protestant and Bavarian Roman Catholic troops and the very important bridge was burnt down.
It was not until the early 19th century that the arrested industrial development of the town recommenced. Schaffhausen is located in a finger of Swiss territory surrounded on three sides by Germany. On 1 April , Schaffhausen suffered a bombing raid by aircraft of the United States Army Air Forces , which strayed from German airspace into neutral Switzerland due to navigation errors.
