Brechen is a municipality in Limburg-Weilburg district in Hesse, Germany. Geography Location Brechen lies in the southeastern part of the Limburg Basin between the Taunus and the Westerwald. The sparsely wooded land of loess hills is crossed here from southeast to northwest by the Emsbach, which is fed near Niederbrechen by the Wörsbach and drains the area down to the Lahn. Together with the Idsteiner Senke (basin), which joins it in the south, this patch of countryside is customarily known as the Goldener Grund (“Golden Ground”), a reference to the favourable climate and the fruitful earth. Neighbouring communities In the northwest the community of Brechen borders on the district seat of Limburg, in the north on the town of Runkel, in the northeast on the market town of Villmar, in the southeast on the community of Selters and in the southwest on the community of Hünfelden (all in Limburg-Weilburg). Constituent communities Brechen's three Ortsteile are Niederbrechen (administrative seat as well as biggest of the three), Oberbrechen and Werschau. Within the framework of administrative reform in Hesse on 31 December 1971, the community of Brechen came into being through the amalgamation of the formerly autonomous communities of Werschau and Niederbrechen. Since 1 July 1974, Oberbrechen has also belonged to the community. History Roman camp Very early in Brechen's history, there was a Roman military camp in what is now the municipal area, at a site now known as Alteburg (“High Castle”), lying on the Emsbach. The camp's south frontage has a length of 140 m joining two sidewalls with respective lengths of 90 and 135 m. The camp came to light after finds made with metal detectors led the regional archaeologist Dr. Schade-Lindig from the Hesse state office for memorial maintenance to carry out the first investigations in the Großer Wald (“Great Forest”) east of Oberbrechen between 1999 and 2001. Lying near a group of Hallstatt-era barrows, the site had long been known to contain something historical, but since it had never been properly investigated, it had always been taken to be a sconce from the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). In particular, the site's good state of preservation had led to this interpretation, but already by 1915, a denarius from Augustus’s time had been found there. The latest investigations have yielded the knowledge that this site was girded by a typical Roman V-shaped ditch, within which spread an area of roughly