Odenwald - Location

The Odenwald lies between the Upper Rhine Rift Valley with the Bergstraße and the Hessisches Ried (the northeastern section of the Rhine rift) in the west, the Main and the Bauland (a mostly unwooded area with good soils) in the east, the Hanau-Seligenstadt Basin – a subbasin of the Upper Rhine Rift Valley in the Rhine-Main Lowlands – in the north and the Kraichgau in the south. The part south of the Neckar valley is sometimes called the Kleiner Odenwald (“Little Odenwald”).

The northern and western Odenwald belong to southern Hesse, with the south stretching into Baden. In the northeast, a small part lies in Lower Franconia in Bavaria.