Kirchberg, Rhein-Hunsrück
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St. Michaels Catholic Church in Kirchberg Hunsrück
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 Kirchberg
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Location of Kirchberg within Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis district
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| Coordinates: 49°56′42″N 7°24′26″E / 49.94500°N 7.40722°ECoordinates: 49°56′42″N 7°24′26″E / 49.94500°N 7.40722°E | ||
| Country | Germany | |
| State | Rhineland-Palatinate | |
| District | Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis | |
| Municipal assoc. | Kirchberg | |
| Government | ||
| • Mayor | Udo Kunz | |
| Area | ||
| • Total | 18.05 km2 (6.97 sq mi) | |
| Elevation | 420 m (1,380 ft) | |
| Population (2015-12-31) | ||
| • Total | 3,891 | |
| • Density | 220/km2 (560/sq mi) | |
| Time zone | CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2) | |
| Postal codes | 55481 | |
| Dialling codes | 06763 | |
| Vehicle registration | SIM | |
| Website | www |
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Kirchberg, the Stadt auf dem Berg (“Town on the Mountain”), called Kerbrich in Moselle Franconian, is a town in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis (district) in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is the seat of the like-named Verbandsgemeinde, to which it also belongs.
The town lies in the Hunsrück, 10 km west of the district seat of Simmern and 12 km east of Frankfurt-Hahn Airport.
Kirchberg’s skyline, with its three towers – two churchtowers and one watertower – can be seen from a long way off, for they stand on raised land that gives the town its nickname “Town on the Mountain”. From the churchtower at Saint Michael’s, the following places can be seen: to the southeast, the Soonwald (a heavily wooded section of the west-central Hunsrück) with the Koppenstein castle ruin; to the south, the Lützelsoon (a little outlier of the Soonwald); to the southwest, the Idarkopf and the Erbeskopf (mountains, the latter of which, at 816 m above sea level is Rhineland-Palatinate’s highest point); to the northeast, the area around Kastellaun; to the east, the district seat of Simmern. West of Kirchberg lies the Kyrbach valley, and to the east the Kauerbach valley. To the town’s north runs the Hunsrückhöhenstraße (“Hunsrück Heights Road”, a scenic road across the Hunsrück built originally as a military road on Hermann Göring’s orders) from Saarburg to Koblenz (Bundesstraße 327).
Aerial photographs of Kirchberg clearly show how the town has developed in stages: The outlying centre of Denzen (from the Celtic Dumno), lying in a hollow to the northeast, had its beginnings in a pre-Roman settlement; the town’s east end was a military base on the Roman road from Trier over the Hunsrück to Bingen am Rhein and Mainz, nowadays known as the Via Ausonia (Ausoniusstraße in German). The mediaeval town centre was girded by a wall with towers and town gates whose course can still be seen from aloft. Around the oval of this former town wall arose residential neighbourhoods, schools and sport facilities, allotments and industrial parks in the time that followed. The Old Town is today still crossed by the course of the old Roman road, which, as was so typical of roads that the Romans built, is dead straight.
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Wikipedia