Rhineland-Palatinate

The Rhineland-Palatinate (German Rheinland-Pfalz) is one of 16 Bundesländer of Germany. It has an area of 19,846 km² and 3.88 million inhabitants. The capital is Mainz.

Geography Rhineland-Palatinate borders on (from the north and clockwise) North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, France, Saarland, Luxembourg and Belgium.

The main axis of the state is the Rhine river, that forms the border with Baden-Württemberg and Hesse in the southeast before running across the northern part of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Rhine Valley is bounded by mountain chains and forms a fascinating landscape with some of the historically most significant places of Germany.

In the northwest there are the southern parts of the Eifel mountains. Further south there is the Hunsrück mountain chain, which is continued by the Taunus mountains on the opposite side of the Rhine. The hilly lands in the south of the state are called the Palatine Forest[?] (Pfälzerwald).

These mountain chains are separated from each other by the tributaries of the Rhine: the Moselle (Mosel), the Lahn[?] and the Nahe[?].

Administration Rhineland-Palatinate is divided into 24 districts, grouped into the three administrative regions (officially no longer called Regierungsbezirk) Koblenz, Trier and Rheinhessen-Pfalz.

Map

Furthermore there are twelve independent towns, which don't belong to any district:

1. Frankenthal[?]
2. Kaiserslautern[?]
3. Koblenz
4. Landau
5. Ludwigshafen
6. Mainz
7. Neustadt (Weinstraße)[?]
8. Pirmasens[?]
9. Speyer
10. Trier
11. Worms
12. Zweibrücken[?]

History The state of Rhineland-Palatinate was established in 1946 by merging the Rhine Palatinate with the southern parts of the Prussian Rhine Province and the parts of former Hesse on the western banks of the Rhine.

External link See the state's own website, http://www.rlp.de/