Teufelsstein (Haardt)

The Teufelsstein in the Haardt mountains, near the Palatine county town of Bad Dürkheim in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, is a hill. On its domed summit is a monolith of the same name (which means "Devil's Rock"). Traces of human activity on the rock indicate that it acted as a cult object in former times.GeographyThe hill, which is a southeastern spur of the 487-metre-high Peterskopf massif, lies north of where the River Isenach breaks out of the Palatinate Forest mountains into the hill country of the Weinstraße and Upper Rhine Plain. From its summit, which nowadays is wooded, there is an all-round view over the Rhine Plain to the east, the Palatinate Forest to the west, and its eastern mountain range, the Haardt, which runs from north to south.Until 1981, when the it was closed for legal reasons, a gondola lift ran from the site of the Dürkheimer Wurstmarkt, the Brühlwiesen, in a northwesterly direction up to the top of the Teufelsstein.A southern outlier, which is also part of the Peterskopf massif, is the 300-metre-high Kästenberg (Pal. for Kastanienberg or "chestnut hill"), is host to the remains of the Heidenmauer, a large Celtic settlement with a 2.5 km long circular wall, which was built around 500 B. C., as well as the Roman quarry, the Kriemhildenstuhl, which was used until the 4th century A. D.