Zweibrücker hill country
The Zweibrücker hill country is an approx. 500 km² of agricultural landscape in western Rhineland-Palatinate . It is bounded in the north by the Schwarzbachtal and in the west by the Hornbachunterlauf . In the east, the Felsalbtal can be taken as the borderline where the Palatinate Forest connects. In the south, the hill country merges seamlessly into the Lorraine plateau.
The Zweibrücker hill country lies entirely in the district of Südwestpfalz . The largest place in the hill country is Vinningen . There is no uniform historical affiliation, rather there have been numerous changes of ownership, partitions and reorganizations over the centuries. Zweibrücken-Bitsch and later Pfalz-Zweibrücken as well as Hanau-Lichtenberg and in the eastern part of the region also the Graefenstein office played a particularly formative role in the Middle Ages, after the Hornbach Monastery, predominantly, had impulses for settlement and development from the 8th - 12th centuries .
The hilly plateau with heights of 300 to 400 m above sea level sends its water mainly over the Hornbach to the Schwarzbach and on to Blies and Saar . The country has numerous, but mostly very small, villages. The soils of the middle shell limestone are well suited for arable farming. Partly in the middle of the arable land there are still many fruit trees, the harvest of which is often processed in closure distilleries. In the transition area to the Palatinate Forest, there is also red sandstone . These areas are immediately recognizable through forest cover or grassland management.
Almost 5% of the total area is under nature protection .
