NEUSS, a busy manufacturing town of Rhenish Prussia, lies 4 miles to the west of Düsseldorf and 1∣ miles from the west bank of the Rhine, with which it is connected by the Erft canal, uniting the Rhine and the Meuse. The chief building in the town is the church of St Quirinus, a remarkably fine example of the transition from the Round to the Pointed style; and there are four other Roman Catholic churches, a Protestant church, a gymnasium (containing a collection of Roman antiquities), and two lunatic asylums established in old convents. The site formerly occupied by‘fortifications is now laid out as a promenade encircling the town. Neuss is the chief place in the Rhenish province for the production of oil and meal, and it also carries on the manufacture of woollen stuffs, white goods, and paper, brick-making, iron-founding, and other industries too numerous to specify. Its markets for cereals are among the most important in Prussia, and it is also the centre of a brisk trade in cattle, coals, building materials, and the products of its various manufactories. In 1880 it contained 17,495 inhabitants, of whom 16,077 were Roman Catholics.

Neuss, the Novesium of the Romans, frequently mentioned by Tacitus, formerly lay close to the Rhine, and was the natural centre of the district of which Düsseldorf has become the chief town.

Drusus, brother of the emperor Tiberius, threw a bridge across the Rhine here, and his name is preserved in the Drususthor, the lower half of which is of Roman masonry. In 1474-75 Charles the Bold of Burgundy besieged the town in vain for eleven weeks, during which he lost 10,000 men; but it was taken and sacked by Alexander Farnese in 1586.