Kirchberg - oldest town in the Hunsrück - part 1
Kirchberg, the oldest town in the Hunsrück, looks back on a long past. Celts, Romans, Franks and later the counts and princes of the Middle Ages, the Counts of Sponheim and the Margraves of Baden have left their mark here. Kirchberg today has around 4,000 inhabitants and is the seat of the municipal administration of the same name. Litter finds from the Neolithic indicate an early settlement. Visible evidence of this time are the many barrows in the vicinity. Around 50 BC The Romans advanced from Gaul to the Rhine. When the Roman poet Decimus Magnus Ausonius traveled from Bingen via Kirchberg to Trier in AD 368 and in his poetic description “Mosella * mentioned the place Dumnissus (today's Kirchberg-Denzen), he could not have guessed that he was doing it would leave the oldest surviving evidence of a Roman settlement on the plateaus of the Hunsrück. Kirchberg, which is first mentioned in 1127 as "Chiriperg", has been in the possession of the Kreuznach line of the Counts of Sponheim since 1248. Since then, the historical development of the city has been closely linked to the Sponheimers and their heirs. In 1259 Kirchberg received city rights. The medieval city was surrounded by a tower-reinforced wall with a moat and rampart, the course of which is still visible from a bird's eye view. In 1689 French troops destroyed the city and its fortifications. In 1708 the office of Kirchberg fell to Baden. Kirchberg became the administrative seat of the new Badisches Oberamt, which existed until the French revolutionary army marched in in 1794. Source: Text information board