The Hill (french: Helle) is a stream in the

High Fens The High Fens (german: Hohes Venn; french: Hautes Fagnes; nl, Hoge Venen), which were declared a nature reserve in 1957, are an upland area, a plateau region in Liège Province, in the east of Belgium and adjoining parts of Germany, between the ...

in east

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

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 (French language, French, ) or Weser (German language, German, ) and Vesder (Dutch language, Dutch, ) is a river in Liège Province, eastern Belgium. A few kilometres of the upper reaches also flow through the German municipality Roetge ...

(''Weser'') at

Eupen Eupen (, ; ; formerly ) is the capital of German-speaking Community of Belgium and is a city and municipality in the Belgian province of Liège, from the German border ( Aachen), from the Dutch border (Maastricht) and from the " High Fens" ...

, 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 a rupture 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 found where tectonic plates a ...

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 refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...

the river was a boundary between the administrative regions of

Tongeren Tongeren (; french: Tongres ; german: Tongern ; li, Tóngere ) is a city and 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 onl ...

(''Civitas Tungrorum'') and

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

(''Civitas Agrippinensium''). From the

High Middle Ages The High Middle Ages, or High Medieval Period, was the periodization, period of European history that lasted from AD 1000 to 1300. The High Middle Ages were preceded by the Early Middle Ages and were followed by the Late Middle Ages, which ended ...

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 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 (german: Herzogtum Jülich; nl, Hertogdom Gulik; french: Duché de Juliers) 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 th ...

. From 1815 to 1919 it divided

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...

from the

United Kingdom of the Netherlands The United Kingdom of the Netherlands ( nl, Verenigd Koninkrijk der Nederlanden; french: Royaume uni des Pays-Bas) is the unofficial name given to the Kingdom of the Netherlands as it existed between 1815 and 1839. The United Netherlands was cr ...

and its successor state, Belgium. In 1952 a 1.5-kilometre-long link tunnel was dug between the Hill and the Eupen

Weser Reservoir Lake Eupen is an artificial lake near Eupen in East Belgium, not far from High Fens. The lake is created by a dam which was built on the river Vesdre in 1938 but inaugurated only in 1950 by Prince Charles of Belgium. The area has a German-speaking ...

, 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 ...

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