Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate & Saarland

Celtic tribes such as the Treveri held the Moselle before Rome arrived under Julius Caesar. The Romans founded Mogontiacum, now Mainz, as a legionary base on the Rhine and Augusta Treverorum, now Trier, which became an imperial residence in the late empire; Constantine the Great lived there, and its Roman monuments are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Limes frontier wall ran through the Taunus hills north of Frankfurt.

In the Middle Ages the archbishops of Mainz and Trier were among the seven prince-electors who chose the Holy Roman Emperor, and a third elector, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, ruled lands that included the Palatinate. Frankfurt became the place of imperial elections, fixed by the Golden Bull of 1356, and later of coronations. Around 1450 Johannes Gutenberg developed printing with movable type in Mainz, and at the Diet of Worms in 1521 Martin Luther refused to recant before Charles V. Hesse, under Landgrave Philip the Magnanimous, turned Protestant and founded the university at Marburg in 1527.

The French Revolutionary armies took the left bank of the Rhine in the 1790s, and in 1832 the Hambach Festival at a Palatinate castle raised the black, red and gold of German democracy; in 1848–49 the first all-German parliament met in Frankfurt's Paulskirche. Karl Marx was born in Trier in 1818. The Saar was run by the League of Nations from 1920 to 1935, again separated under French control after 1945, and joined West Germany only in 1957. Hesse was created by the Americans in 1945 and Rhineland-Palatinate by the French in 1946.

This is Rhine-Franconian country: the dialects of Hesse, the Palatinate and the Saar are soft, sing-song and much imitated, and the Moselle speaks a Franconian close to Luxembourgish. The west bank and the Saarland are mostly Catholic, shaped by the old prince-bishoprics of Mainz and Trier, while much of Hesse is Protestant. Saarlanders cultivate a French-flavoured easy-goingness, and the French border is never far away.

Carnival, known here as Fastnacht, is huge in Mainz, whose televised political satire sessions and Rose Monday parade are national institutions. The wine year sets the calendar elsewhere, with village wine festivals across the Rheingau, Rheinhessen, the Moselle and the Palatinate from spring to October, and the September Wurstmarkt in Bad Dürkheim, which despite its name is a wine festival. Frankfurt hosts the world's largest book fair each October, and Kassel stages documenta, the contemporary art exhibition held every five years.

The region claims a literary and fairy-tale heritage: Goethe was born in Frankfurt in 1749, and the Brothers Grimm grew up in Hesse, studied in Kassel and Marburg. Crafts range from Westerwald salt-glazed stoneware to the gem cutters of Idar-Oberstein in the Hunsrück. Manners are informal by German standards, particularly at the long shared tables of a wine tavern, where strangers are expected to sit together and talk.

About 11 million people live across the three states: some 6.3 million in Hesse, 4.1 million in Rhineland-Palatinate and just under a million in the Saarland. Frankfurt, with about 770,000 residents, anchors the Rhine-Main metropolitan area together with Wiesbaden, the Hessian capital, Mainz, the Rhineland-Palatinate capital, Darmstadt and Offenbach. Kassel leads northern Hesse; Ludwigshafen, Koblenz, Trier and Kaiserslautern are the main cities of Rhineland-Palatinate; and Saarbrücken, with about 180,000 people, is the Saarland's capital.

Frankfurt is one of continental Europe's leading financial centres, home to the European Central Bank, the Bundesbank and the stock exchange, and its airport is a major employer. BASF runs its huge chemical complex in Ludwigshafen, Opel is based in Rüsselsheim, and BioNTech, the vaccine developer, is in Mainz. The United States military remains a major employer around Kaiserslautern and Ramstein. Wine, tourism and forestry sustain the river valleys, many Trier residents commute to Luxembourg, and the Saarland is still adjusting after the end of coal mining in 2012 and cuts in its steel and car plants.

Life has a commuter rhythm in Rhine-Main, with long S-Bahn journeys and high rents, and a slower pace in the valleys, where evenings are spent in a wine tavern or a Frankfurt apple-wine house.

Frankfurt's cooking is its own. Grüne Soße, a cold green sauce of seven herbs with sour cream, is eaten with boiled eggs and potatoes; Handkäs mit Musik is a small, pungent sour-milk cheese marinated with onions; and Frankfurter Würstchen are the thin smoked pork sausages the city lent its name to. It is all washed down with Apfelwein — local dialect Ebbelwoi — a tart cider poured from a grey stoneware jug, the Bembel. The Frankfurter Kranz is a ring cake layered with buttercream and coated in brittle.

The Palatinate is proud of Saumagen, a pig's stomach stuffed with pork, potato and spices and served sliced, along with liver dumplings and yeast dumplings called Dampfnudeln. Mainz eats "Weck, Worscht un Woi" — a bread roll, sausage and wine — and Rheinhessen serves Spundekäs, a cream cheese dip. The Saarland favours Lyoner sausage, Schwenker, pork neck grilled on a swinging grill, and Dibbelabbes, a potato hash with leek and bacon, while the Hunsrück claims Spießbraten, spit-roasted meat.

Wine is everywhere. The Moselle and the Rheingau make some of the world's most admired Riesling, Rheinhessen is Germany's largest wine-growing region and the Palatinate its second, the Nahe sits between them, and the small Ahr valley is known for red Spätburgunder, the German name for Pinot Noir. Sekt, German sparkling wine, is made in Wiesbaden, Eltville and elsewhere along the Rhine.

Frankfurt pairs its towers with the reconstructed Römerberg square and cathedral, the Goethe House, the Paulskirche and the Museumsufer, a string of museums along the Main that includes the Städel. Wiesbaden has spa buildings and a casino, Darmstadt Art Nouveau at the Mathildenhöhe, and Kassel the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe with its Hercules statue and cascades, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Marburg climbs from the Elisabethkirche to its castle, and the Rheingau's vineyards run from Eltville to Rüdesheim, with the Cistercian abbey of Kloster Eberbach and the Niederwald monument above the river.

The Rhine Gorge, the Upper Middle Rhine Valley between Bingen and Koblenz, is the classic journey: Bacharach, Oberwesel, the Loreley rock, Rheinfels castle at St. Goar and the Marksburg, which was never destroyed. At Koblenz the Deutsches Eck marks the meeting of Rhine and Moselle beneath Ehrenbreitstein fortress. Mainz has its red sandstone cathedral, the Gutenberg Museum and Chagall's blue windows in St. Stephan; Worms and Speyer have great Romanesque cathedrals, Speyer's a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Moselle winds through Bernkastel-Kues, Traben-Trarbach and Cochem to the Rhine, with Burg Eltz in a side valley. Trier holds the Porta Nigra, the Imperial Baths, the amphitheatre, the Aula Palatina, the cathedral and Karl Marx's birthplace. The Eifel has volcanic crater lakes and Laacher See, and the Palatinate Forest and the German Wine Route run south towards France. In the Saarland, Saarbrücken has the baroque Ludwigskirche, the Saar loops around a wooded ridge at Mettlach, and the Völklingen Ironworks are a UNESCO-listed industrial monument.