city, North Rhine-Westphalia Land (state), northwestern Germany. It is situated where the Aa River joins the Werre, north of the Teutoburger Wald (mountains). It originated around a Benedictine nunnery founded in about 789 and confirmed by the emperor Louis the Pious in 823; the abbess obtained from Frederick I a princely rank and a seat in the imperial Diet. Later a member of the Hanseatic League and a free imperial town, Herford fell to Brandenburg in 1647; it passed to Westphalia in 1807 and to Prussia in 1815. The old town has several medieval houses of stone and half-timber and numerous parks and gardens. Among its churches are the Romanesque Church of Münster and the Gothic Church of Mary (1325).