Rheinböllen is a town in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis (district) in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Simmern-Rheinböllen, whose seat is in Simmern. It was the seat of the former Verbandsgemeinde Rheinböllen. Geography Location Rheinböllen lies some 10 km as the crow flies southwest of the Middle Rhine at Bacharach in the southeast Hunsrück. The town is found in the transitional zone between (to the east) the Binger Wald (Bingen Forest) and (to the south) the Soonwald, a heavily wooded section of the west-central Hunsrück that since 2005 has belonged to the Naturpark Soonwald-Nahe. Constituent communities Rheinböllen has two outlying Stadtteile: Kleinweidelbach and Rheinböllerhütte. Climate Yearly precipitation in Rheinböllen amounts to 695 mm. This falls into the middle third of the precipitation chart for all Germany. Only at 39% of the German Weather Service's weather stations are lower figures recorded. The driest month is February. The most rainfall comes in June. In that month, precipitation is 1.6 times what it is in February. Precipitation varies only slightly. Only at 2% of the weather stations are lower seasonal swings recorded. Name The prefix Rhein— suggests some kind of historical dependence on Bacharach, to whose Vogtei Rheinböllen may well once have belonged, before it passed to the Counts Palatine. The past teacher and local historian Junges traced Bollen to an old word meaning "hill" or "height", leading to the interpretation of the name as meaning “Rhine Heights" (an apt description of the location, up on the Hunsrück). Through the ages, the name for Rheinböllen has taken many spellings: Rinbul, Rinbulle, Rynbuhel, Reynbullen, Rymbul, Rymbulen, Rynbule, Rinbelle, Bollen, Bullen, Rinbulde, Rheinbullen. History The Rheinböllen region was settled as early as the Stone Age. Shortly after 1900, workmen digging near the railway station found a sharpened, polished stone axe, the earliest evidence of human habitation in what is now the town. Archaeological finds in the area of the Altdorf ("Old Village", a triangle formed by the streets Simmerner Straße, Poststraße and Bahnhofstraße) point to Celtic beginnings. The Romans later drove a road through the settlement. Street names used today, such as Wehr ("Defence") and Hinterster Graben ("Hindmost Moat") bear witness to a girding wall that once stood around the village. Rheinböllen was secured with two wall moats. An illustration from 1620 shows palisades on the wall, which itself had a defensive tower built into it. Rheinböllen was the main centre in the so-called "Old Court"