Voltaire's famous punchline — that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire — was aimed at a polity that lasted 844 years anyway. The Holy Roman Empire was Europe's strangest construction: a thousand princes under one elected emperor, a medieval federation that refused to become a modern state, and refused to die trying.
Aachen ★ Prague Vienna Rome Sicily Greatest extent — stylized map 962 Otto I crowned 1077 Canossa 1356 The Golden Bull 1519–1556 Charles V 1618–1648 Thirty Years' War 1806 Abdication Rise · zenith · fall Reign lengths of named emperors Frederick Barbarossa 1152–1190 Charles V 1519–1556 Imperial reigns — from the article The rise It began on 2 February 962, when Pope John XII crowned the German king Otto I as emperor in Rome. Otto had crushed the Magyars at the Lechfeld, absorbed northern Italy, and claimed the inheritance of Charlemagne — whose empire had dissolved a century earlier. The coronation rebooted the imperial idea in the West: a German king, crowned by a pope, ruling as the heir of Rome.
