A small protected landscape of hedges, meadows, and historic earthworks on the Baar plateau.
Villingen Süd
Villingen Süd is a small protected landscape, or Landschaftsschutzgebiet, on the southern outskirts of the city of Villingen-Schwenningen in the Schwarzwald-Baar-Kreis of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Designated on 16 April 1991, the area covers roughly 4.89 square kilometers of mixed farmland, meadows, hedgerows, and small woodland patches set within the natural region of the Baar, a broad plateau between the Black Forest and the Swabian Alb.
The protected landscape is shaped by centuries of agricultural use, with hedges and field copses breaking up the agricultural land into a richly structured mosaic. At its center rises the Magdalenenberg, an Iron Age burial mound that gives the surrounding landscape a deep cultural-historical dimension. Streams such as the Warenbach and the Lohwaldgraben cross the area, and a series of small ponds between Rietheim and Marbach add to its ecological variety.
Villingen Süd is not a remote high-elevation park, but rather an example of a working, inhabited, and ecologically valuable rural landscape preserved close to an urban area. It belongs to the broader Natura 2000 network through its overlap with the Baar Bird Protection Area and parts of the FFH area Baar, Eschach und Südostschwarzwald, and lies within the Naturpark Südschwarzwald.
