Wittlich

The town of Wittlich (ˈvɪtlɪç; Moselle Franconian: Wittlech) is the seat of the Bernkastel-Wittlich district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Its historic town centre and the beauty of the surrounding countryside make the town a centre for tourism in southwest Germany. Wittlich is the middle centre for a feeder area of 56 municipalities in the Eifel and Moselle area with a population of roughly 64,000. With some 18,000 inhabitants, Wittlich is the biggest town between Trier and Koblenz and the fourth biggest between Mainz and the Belgian border. The town lies in the South Eifel on the River Lieser in a side valley of the Moselle on the northern edge of the Wittlich Depression. This stretch of country is bounded in the west by the low mountains of the Moselle Eifel and in the east by the Moselle valley. Wittlich's Stadtteile or Ortsbezirke (districts or suburbs), besides the main centre, also called Wittlich, are Bombogen, Dorf, Lüxem, Neuerburg, and Wengerohr, each of which was a self-administering municipality. until 7 June 1969. The oldest known remnants of human settlement activity come from the third millennium BC. In Roman times there stood right on the River Lieser, where the autobahn bridge is now, a stately villa rustica or countryside villa. In 1065, Wittlich had its first documentary mention. In 1300, Archbishop-Elector Diether von Nassau of Trier granted Wittlich town rights. It had long been assumed, however, that Wittlich had already been granted town rights in 1291, leading to the 700th-anniversary celebrations in 1991. In the middle ages, the prince-electors of Trier constructed a castle in Wittlich, Burg Ottenstein. This castle was replaced in the 18th century by a hunting lodge, Schloss Philippsfreude, which was destroyed during the times of the French Revolution. In 1912, Germany's first youth prison was built in Wittlich, which also still borders on the Justizvollzugsanstalt Wittlich (“Wittlich Correctional Facility”). In 2009, the town of Wittlich was included in the programme Aktive Stadtzentren (“Active Town Centres”) of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.