Groß-Umstadt

Groß-Umstadt is a town in the district of Darmstadt-Dieburg in the Bundesland of Hessen in Germany. It is near Darmstadt and Frankfurt on the northern border of the Odenwald and is on the south-eastern edge of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main Region.The population is about 21,000 residents. About half of these live in Umstadt itself and the remainder in eight other districts which were combined with Umstadt in the state of Hessen government reforms in the 1970s: Dorndiel Heubach Kleestadt Klein-Umstadt Raibach Richen Semd Wiebelsbach The last of these includes Frau-Nauses.HistoryTraces of palaeolithic habitation have been identified outside the town.The settlement of Civitas Auderiensium was founded at Dieburg in AD 125 in the context of the Roman occupation of the section of the province of Germania Superior on the right bank of the Rhine. The foundation was followed by an orderly settlement and Romanisation of the district, and a market for agricultural produce was established. The main building of a "villa rustica" has been excavated under the current town church. This villa remained until the collapse of the Alemanni around AD 300. The town's history over the following 450 years until the first documentary evidence of the town is unclear. Alemannic and later Frankish tombs point to a settlement in the area of the town. The siting of the church in the core area of the former villa indicates an uninterrupted settlement, or at least to awareness of the previous settlement.