Other divisions · History
Inside and outside the Roman Empire
Around AD 200 the Roman frontier ran along the Rhine, the Danube and the Limes, a 550-km palisade-and-wall line from Rheinbrohl on the Rhine to Eining on the Danube. 151 of today's 401 districts lie mostly inside it, home to 37% of Germany's people.
| Zone | Districts | People | Share | Area |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inside the Empire West of the Rhine, south of the Danube, and within the Limes | 151 | 31 m | 37.2% | 99,079 km² |
| Outside (Germania magna) Beyond the Rhine, the Limes and the Danube | 250 | 52.5 m | 62.8% | 258,510 km² |
For about a hundred years, from the AD 160s until around 260, the Upper Germanic–Rhaetian Limes was the outer edge of the Roman Empire in Germany. It left the Rhine at Rheinbrohl, climbed over the Taunus, swung around the fertile Wetterau, followed the Main from Großkrotzenburg to Miltenberg, ran dead straight for 80 km through the forests of Württemberg and then, as a stone wall, east to the Danube at Eining. West of the Rhine and south of the Danube the rivers themselves were the frontier.
Inside lay cities that are still among Germany's oldest: Cologne (Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium), Trier (Augusta Treverorum), Mainz (Mogontiacum), Augsburg (Augusta Vindelicum), Regensburg (Castra Regina) and Bonn, Koblenz, Worms, Speyer and Passau. Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Hamburg, Berlin, Nuremberg and Leipzig lie outside, in what the Romans called Germania magna, while the land on which Munich and Stuttgart were later founded lay inside.
The line still shows in some of today's data. Comparing only districts in the former West (to keep the 1949–1990 border out of it), those inside the old Empire earn more and have fewer people out of work: a mean gross monthly salary of €4,446 against €4,117, unemployment 5.3% against 6.6%, and a Green vote of 13.5% against 11.9%. The AfD vote, by contrast, is the same on both sides in the West (17.9% vs 18.0%): its Germany-wide gap is the East–West divide. Correlation is not inheritance: the south and west are also the more Catholic, wine-growing half, shaped by many later histories.
The Upper Germanic–Rhaetian Limes has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2005 and the Lower German Limes along the Rhine since 2021, both as part of the "Frontiers of the Roman Empire". Around AD 260, amid civil war and Alamannic raids, Rome gave up the land beyond the Rhine and the Danube and the frontier fell back to the rivers.
Does the line still show?
Today's figures on each side, as population-weighted averages of the district values (our calculation from the live themes on this site).
| Indicator | Inside the Empire | Outside (Germania magna) |
|---|---|---|
| AfD vote 2025 | 17.9% | 22.0% |
| Green vote 2025 | 13.5% | 10.8% |
| Unemployment 2025 | 5.3% | 6.9% |
| Gross monthly salary € 31.12.2025 | 4,446 | 4,007 |
| Young people 31.12.2025 | 13.8% | 12.8% |
| Childcare 1 March 2025 | 33.2% | 41.9% |
| Foreign population 31.12.2025 | 20.0% | 15.0% |
How we drew the line
The frontier of about AD 160–260 is drawn as one polygon: the Rhine from the Dutch border up to Rheinbrohl (left bank inside), the Upper Germanic Limes from Rheinbrohl over the Taunus and around the Wetterau to Großkrotzenburg, the Main up to Miltenberg, the outer Limes from Miltenberg via Walldürn, Osterburken, Öhringen and Welzheim to Lorch, the Rhaetian Limes from Lorch via Aalen, Gunzenhausen and Weißenburg to Hienheim opposite Eining, and the Danube downstream to the Austrian border (south bank inside). River courses are today's main channels from OpenStreetMap. The Limes is drawn as a polyline through 108 documented forts and watchtower sites in the numbering of the Reichs-Limeskommission (positions from OpenStreetMap, route as described by the Deutsche Limeskommission), straight between sites. Each of today's 401 districts is assigned to the side holding the majority of its area, estimated from about 2,000 sample points per district on the official BKG boundaries (VG2500).
- An approximation by today's district boundaries: districts the line or a river cuts through are shown wholly on the side with the larger share of their area (e.g. the Taunus, Wetterau, Ostalb and Danube districts, and Rhine-split cities such as Cologne and Duisburg).
- Shows the frontier of about AD 160–260 (the outer Limes). Before about 160 the line ran further west along the Odenwald and the Neckar; before AD 85–90 there was no Limes; after about 260 Rome withdrew to the Rhine, Danube and Iller.
- The Limes is drawn straight between documented sites and the rivers follow their modern main channels; local deviations of a few hundred metres do not change any district.
- Comparisons with today's data show association, not cause: many later divides (religion, industrialisation, the 1949–1990 border) overlap the old frontier.