Maximilianstrasse is Augsburg's grandest street, and it has been important for over two thousand years. The Romans built it as part of the Via Claudia Augusta, the main trading route south to Italy. In the Middle Ages it was known as the Wine Market. In the sixteenth century, it became something else entirely: the address where Europe's wealthiest banking families put their palaces.

Jakob Fugger, whose fortune exceeded that of most European monarchs, designed his own palace here from 1512, basing the plans on notes taken during travels in Italy. The result was one of the first Renaissance buildings north of the Alps. Emperor Charles V stayed there during his campaigns. Martin Luther was interrogated inside its walls in 1518. The Welser family, who briefly held Venezuela as security on an imperial loan, built nearby.

Three Mannerist bronze fountains, depicting Augustus, Mercury, and Hercules, were added between 1589 and 1602 to mark Augsburg's 1,600th birthday. The water that fed them came from the medieval waterworks at the Roten Tor, carried uphill through pipes made of hollowed tree trunks.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours walk the full length of Maximilianstrasse, tracing the Fugger and Welser dynasties and the Roman road that made Augsburg rich long before either family arrived.