Heidesheim am Rhein is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Verbandsgemeinde of Heidesheim am Rhein, which also includes the Ortsgemeinde of Wackernheim. Heidesheim is one of the biggest municipalities in Rhenish Hesse.GeographyLocationHeidesheim lies in northern Rhenish Hesse, on the so-called Rhine Knee, west of the state capital, Mainz. The municipal area reaches in the north up to the middle of the Rhine’s navigational lane, which here reaches one of its greatest breadths, comprising even the Königsklinger Aue (an island, although its name identifies it as a floodplain). At the bank behind the floodwall, at an elevation of some 82 m, it abuts a sandy plain which is used especially for growing asparagus and which is also covered in fruit trees. Just behind the floodwall is the outlying centre of Heidenfahrt. From here, before the channelling work on the Mariannenaue (floodplain) was broadened towards the east, there was once a ferry link to Erbach. The community core of Heidesheim itself lies some 2 km from the Rhine’s banks, in a location safe from floodwaters at the foot of the Rhenish Hesse hill country. The municipal area stretches on from there up the north slope of these hills, reaching 2 km east of the municipality’s centre an elevation of 207 m above sea level. Wherever gaps in the fruit trees allow it, there is a broad view over the Rhine into the Rheingau, all the way to the western part of the Taunus’s main ridge, the Rheingau Range (Rheingaugebirge) with the Kalte Herberge and the Hallgarter Zange (mountains) as its highest elevations in the centre. In the east, near Uhlerborn, on the boundary with Budenheim, Heidesheim has a share of one of Rhenish Hesse’s few wooded areas.