Breisach

Breisach am Rhein (German pronunciation:, lit.'Breisach on the Rhine'; formerly Alt-Breisach, lit.'Old Breisach', in contrast to "New Breisach"; Low Alemannic: Alt-Brisach), commonly known as Breisach, is a town with approximately 16,500 inhabitants, situated along the Rhine in the Rhine Valley, in the districtBreisgau-Hochschwarzwald, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, about halfway between Freiburg and Colmar — 20 kilometres away from each — and about 60 kilometres north of Basel near the Kaiserstuhl. A bridge leads over the Rhine to Neuf-Brisach, Alsace.

Its name is Celtic and means breakwater. The rootBreis can also be found in the French word briser meaning to break. The hill on which Breisach came into existence was — at least when there was a flood — in the middle of the Rhine, until the Rhine was straightened by the engineer Johann Gottfried Tulla in the 19th century, thus breaking its surge.