is a town in the north of the Aschaffenburg district in the Regierungsbezirk of Lower Franconia (Unterfranken) in Bavaria, Germany.

[3] Alzenau is one of the eastern outliers of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region and is crossed by the river Kahl.

[8] The former epithet “in Unterfranken” (“in Lower Franconia”) distinguished it from another Alzenau (now Olszanka, Opole Voivodeship, Silesia), which since the Potsdam Agreement has been in Poland.

[11] In the 12th century, the Freigericht (“Free Court”) was established by Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa comprising the settlements of Wildmundsheim, Hörstein, Mömbris and Somborn and it was excused taxes and obligatory service.

The Märker, as the townsmen sometimes called themselves, had to defend their autonomy against local noble families’ ambitions; these included the Rannenbergs and the Rienecks, and further pressures came from the Archbishops of Mainz.

[12] In the course of striving for Imperial reform, Emperor Maximilian I enfeoffed both the Archbishopric of Mainz and the Counts of Hanau in 1500 with the joint lordship over the free court, for which the two fiefholders were together to appoint the Amtmann ("bailiff" or "governor").

Conflicts arose from the inhabitants’ insistence on their ancestral freedoms and the denominational antagonism between the Calvinist Counts of Hanau on the one side and the Catholic population and the Archbishop on the other.

The Archbishop of Mainz then took over the free court as its only surviving lord, but in 1740 had to cede the Amt of Somborn to the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel, who were the heirs to the County of Hanau, after a fierce legal battle.

In 1816, the Grand Duchy of Hesse ceded the Amt to the Kingdom of Bavaria, and Alzenau has since remained Bavarian.

The German blazon reads “In Rot über zwei gekreuzten goldenen Zweigen ein sechsspeichiges silbernes Rad”.

In 1999, Alzenau was recognized as an “Economy-Friendly Community” with a special award from the Bavarian Minister of State for Economy, Transport and Technology.

[18] In Albstadt, too, there was winegrowing until the late 19th century, as witnessed by the Gemarkung (traditional rural cadastral area) of Wingertsberg.

The bodies of water that arose from the former brown coal works on the Kahler Seenplatte (“Kahl Lake Plateau”) lie nearby, from 5 to 10 km away.

[23] In 1999, the following institutions existed: Some cycle and hiking paths around Alzenau, as Europäische Kulturwege Alzenau I, II und III (created by the Aschaffenburg project group Archäologisches Spessartprojekt), are tied into the project "Pathways to Cultural Landscapes" promoted by the European Union between 2000 and 2003.