The Hill () is a stream in the

High Fens The High Fens (; ; ), which were declared a Nature reserve, nature reserve in 1957, are an upland area, a Plateau, plateau region in Liège Province, in the east of Belgium and adjoining parts of northwestern Germany, between the Ardennes and the ...

in east

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

Course

The Hill rises near the highest point in Belgium, the

Signal de Botrange Signal de Botrange is the highest point in Wallonia and in Belgium, located in the ''High Fens'' (''Hautes Fagnes'' in French, ''Hohes Venn'' in German, ''Hoge Venen'' in Dutch), at . It is the top of a broad plateau and a road crosses the sum ...

and empties into the

Vesdre The Vesdre (), Weser () or Vesder () is a river in Liège Province, eastern Belgium. River A few kilometres of the upper reaches also flow through the German municipality Roetgen and form part of the Belgian–German border. The Vesdre's total l ...

(''Weser'') at

Eupen Eupen (, , ; ; ; former ) is the capital of German-speaking Community of Belgium and is a city and municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Belgium, Belgian Liège Province, province of Liège, from the Germany, German border (Aachen ...

, 25 kilometres further north. The most important tributaries of the Hill are the Spoorbach and the Soor. The confluence of the Hill and the Spoorbach is located 10 kilometres further downstream near the village of Herzogenhügel. This village is interesting for geological reasons: in a stone quarry there is the only rock of

volcanic A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often fo ...

origin in East Belgium. The Soor discharges into the Hill just before Eupen, at a place called the Black Bridge (''Schwarze Brücke'').

The Hill as a state border

During the

Roman era In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

the river was a boundary between the administrative regions of

Tongeren Tongeren (; ; ; ) is a city and former municipality located in the Belgian province of Limburg, in the southeastern corner of the Flemish region of Belgium. Tongeren is the oldest town in Belgium, as the only Roman administrative capital wit ...

(''Civitas Tungrorum'') and

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

(''Civitas Agrippinensium''). From the

High Middle Ages The High Middle Ages, or High Medieval Period, was the periodization, period of European history between and ; it was preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which ended according to historiographical convention ...

to 1795 it was the border between the territorial lordships that divided up the region of the High Fens. For example, the border between the

Duchy of Limburg The Duchy of Limburg or Limbourg was an imperial estate of the Holy Roman Empire. Much of the area of the duchy is today located within Liège Province of Belgium, with a small portion in the municipality of Voeren, an Enclave and exclave, excla ...

and the

Duchy of Luxembourg The Duchy of Luxembourg (; ; ; ) was a Imperial state, state of the Holy Roman Empire, the ancestral homeland of the noble House of Luxembourg. The House of Luxembourg became one of the most important political forces in the 14th century, comp ...

ran here and, further north, in the area of the Herzogenhügel ("Duke(s) Knoll"), between Limburg and the

Duchy of Jülich The Duchy of Jülich (; ; ) comprised a state within the Holy Roman Empire from the 11th to the 18th centuries. The duchy lay west of the Rhine river and was bordered by the Electorate of Cologne to the east and the Duchy of Limburg to the wes ...

. From 1815 to 1919 it divided

Prussia Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...

from the

United Kingdom of the Netherlands The United Kingdom of the Netherlands is the unofficial name given to the Kingdom of the Netherlands as it existed from 1815 to 1839. The United Netherlands was created in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars through the fusion of territories t ...

and its successor state, Belgium. In 1952 a 1.5-kilometre-long link tunnel was dug between the Hill and the Eupen Weser Reservoir, in order to better regulate the high water demand of the textile industry. For about half its length, the Hill flows through the

High Fens-Eifel Nature Park High may refer to: Science and technology * Height * High (atmospheric), a high-pressure area * High (computability), a quality of a Turing degree, in computability theory * High (tectonics), in geology an area where relative tectonic uplift to ...

Gallery

File:Karte Hohes Venn.png, Map of the Hill region File:Hill-Soor.JPG, Confluence of the Soor and the Hill File:Vesdre-Hill-Eupen.JPG, Mouth of the Hill on the Weser

External links

{{Commons category, Hill River (Belgium), Hill Rivers of Belgium Rivers of the Eifel