Rhinehessian Tableland and historic villages with vespers and wine

About the E-Bike Tour

Winegrowing and Christianity shaped the area on the left bank of the Rhine. Our e-bike tour takes you right through it – on a circular tour between Ockenheim, Appenheim and Aspisheim. Enjoy fascinating nature, wide rolling hills and villages that have been shaped by Roman, Frankish, French and Prussian influences over the centuries.

We enjoy grandiose views at our vesper picnic with wine, admire a hundred-year-old chestnut tree, stroll through a vine arbour with exotic grape varieties and visit a monastery.

History

The hills of Rheinhessen were settled by humans about 500,000 years ago. Archaeological finds prove continuous settlement into the Stone Age.

A period of peace lasting several hundred years in Roman times until the abandonment of the Limes led to a blossoming of bourgeois culture. Rural villas – villae rusticae – rather small farms, farms and state estates – generated wealth. This also led to the acquisition of a wide range of technical equipment, which made a highly developed ancient farming culture possible. Celtic settlements were developed into cities.

From 420 AD, the Burgundians dominated the area. In the middle of the 5th century, Roman rule collapsed and Franks and Alemanni occupied the area on the left bank of the Rhine.

In the meantime, Christianity had prevailed among the Franks. Economic and cultural phenomena show a continuity from Roman to Frankish times: wine growing and Christianity. Under Charlemagne (768-814), the Frankish Empire extended to the Elbe.

Until the end of the 8th century, the most important powers in Rhine-Hessian history were the Archbishopric of Mainz and the Palatinate. The end of the Electoral Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine was sealed in 1801 in the Peace of Lunéville and Rhenish Hesse became French. In 1793, the Prussians occupied Mainz – thus ending the first republic on German soil. But the French returned and in the Peace of Basel in 1795 and of Campio Formio in 1797, Prussia and Austria ceded the entire territory on the left bank of the Rhine to France.

Napoleon’s defeat in 1813 ended sixteen years of French administration. The end of the old empire “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation” came with the laying down of the imperial crown by Emperor Franz II in 1806 – it had existed since the days of Otto I (936-973).

In 1816, the Grand Duke in Mainz took over the northern part of the region on the basis of a state treaty between Prussia, Austria and Hesse within the framework of the Congress of Vienna – Rheinhessen came into being.