Neckarsteinach

Geschichte

The four-castle town of Neckarsteinach lies on the Neckar in the Bergstraße district in the southernmost part of Hesse, Germany, 15 km east of Heidelberg.GeographyLocationBoth by way of transport and culture, Neckarsteinach’s location in the Neckar valley more tightly links it with the North Baden area around Heidelberg than with the rest of Hesse. It is furthermore one of the municipalities belonging, like the ones in the surrounding districts, to the Rhine Neckar Area. It lies mainly on the Neckar’s north bank along the B 37 and the Neckartalbahn (railway) and is Hesse’s and the Bergstraße district’s southernmost town, 15 km east of Heidelberg. Along the former railway spur line to Schönau, a further population centre was built to the northwest, that is to say, behind the Burgberg (“Castle Mountain”). In the east of town lies a smaller industrial area, a shipyard that arose out of shipbuilding, south of the B 37 on the Neckar marsh.Neckarsteinach’s core lies southeast of and below the Vorderburg – one of four castles in town – and beginning in the 14th century it and the castle were girded by the same wall with the current town centre serving as the castle hamlet. The community was bordered in the north and east by the river Steinach, in the south by the Neckar and in the west by the Burgberg. The landscape near Neckarsteinach is in particular characterized by the cone of the Bergfeste Dilsberg lying across the Neckar (in Neckargemünd, Baden-Württemberg), around which the Neckar flows in a broad bend.