Germany · Baden-Württemberg · Baden-Baden
Rheinau, Baden-Baden — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Rheinau stands directly on the Rhine in the Ortenau district, nine formerly independent villages merged into one municipality in 1975.
About Rheinau
Where to stay in Rheinau
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Freistett anchors the beds. Rheinau spreads across nine village centres rather than one town, so rooms are scattered, and many travellers base themselves in Kehl or Strasbourg and drive out along the Rhine for the day. Rheinbischofsheim is the other pole.
Its Protestant church, the Rheinbischofsheim Jewish cemetery and the village shops fall within the same few streets, so a stay there needs less driving than the outlying settlements do.
About Rheinau
What are the main landmarks in Rheinau?
Church towers do most of the naming here. Rheinau counts a Protestant church at Rheinbischofsheim, another at Helmlingen and a third at Memprechtshofen, while the Evangelische Kirche Diersheim and the Vincentiuskirche in Linx serve villages of their own. Museum Rheinau keeps the local collection.
Saint John the Baptist stands at Rheinbischofsheim, the Nikolaus chapel and the Heidenkirchel mark older ground, and two burial places, the Rheinbischofsheim Jewish cemetery and the Jüdischer Friedhof Freistett, record the Jewish communities of those two villages.
What is the history of Rheinau?
Nine villages became one. Rheinau was established in 1975 through the merger of nine formerly independent villages, among them Freistett, Helmlingen and Rheinbischofsheim, each of which kept its own church and its own name. The Rhine sets the far edge.
That river forms the border with France, and the villages of the Ortenau district behind it keep the agricultural tradition of white asparagus that the Spargelfest marks each spring.
Where is Rheinau?
Rheinau covers roughly 73 square kilometres of Ortenau countryside on the Rhine, about 10 kilometres north of Kehl and about 15 kilometres east of Strasbourg.
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Updated August 2026