Grünstadt (Palatine German: Grinnschdadt) is a town in the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany with roughly 13,200 inhabitants.

Grünstadt belongs to the “Unterhaardt” a landscape with submediterranean character as the geographer Christophe Neff wrote in his paysages blog.

At roughly the same time, there still stood a southern centre in the area around the Martinskirche (Saint Martin's Church) that belonged to the Glandern (or Lungenfeld) Monastery near Metz, and it is believed that there was a further settlement between the two.

Grünstadt at first developed gradually from these three centres, one of which – apparently the southernmost – went back to a Frankish clan chief by the name of “Grimdeo” or “Grindeo”.

Grünstadt – or rather the southern settlement around Saint Martin's – had its first documentary mention on 21 November 875, when King Louis the German restored this estate to the Glandern Monastery near Metz.

Saint Peter's Church (Peterskirche) and its graveyard, whose beginnings could well go back to Roman times, were nevertheless kept on into the 19th century as a religious centre and necropolis, even though they lay far outside the later town of Grünstadt.

In 1218, Pope Honorius III confirmed the Glandern Monastery's ownership of Saint Martin's Church in Grünstadt.

From 1481 to 1505, Grünstadt belonged to the Palatinate, and then once again to the Leiningens, who in 1549 were also enfeoffed with the Glandern Monastery's holdings there (the southern part around Saint Martin's).

The year before this one, Count Philipp I of Leiningen had introduced the obligatory practice of the Lutheran faith in his county and forbidden the other Christian denominations, namely Roman Catholicism and Reformed.

It was only in 1689 that the long overdue reform to the Gregorian Calendar was implemented in Grünstadt and the rest of the county, heretofore having been boycotted for religious reasons because it was instituted by Pope Gregory XIII.

Since both the family castles of Altleiningen and Neuleiningen had also been burnt down, the two comital lines both settled in Grünstadt beginning in 1700, made it a common residence town and took turns ruling.

The Reformed Schultheiß and master tanner Johann Peter Schwartz, especially, put himself forth as the group's spokesman to defend against this treatment.

He wrote to royalty (for instance, King Frederick II of Prussia) and eventually forced formal tolerance of the Reformed Church in the county.

In 1794, the man who would later become Field Marshal von Blücher, but who at this time was a colonel in the Prussian Red Hussars, procured quarters in the town.

According to local lore, he rode his horse up the outdoor stairway that then stood at the (now former) town hall and made a speech to the townsfolk.

On 14 June 1829, King Ludwig I of Bavaria and his consort Queen Therese visited the town as part of their tour of the Palatinate.

On 14 June 1849 – twenty years to the day later – Prince William of Prussia, who would later be Wilhelm I, German Emperor, rode in pursuit of the irregular, revolutionary partisans (Freischärler) coming from Kirchheimbolanden with his staff through what is now called Jakobstraße (street) and Hauptstraße.

At the Stadthaus (now known as the Old Town Hall) he made a stop and an officer from his entourage spoke from the outdoor stairway to the townsfolk on the topic of “Loyalty towards Prince and Fatherland”, whereafter the military detachment pushed on towards the south.

In the Second World War (1939–1945), Grünstadt was repeatedly the target of air raids to which, among others, Saint Martin's Church fell victim.

The German blazon reads: In Grün ein rotbewehrter silberner Adler, bewinkelt von vier gleichschenkligen goldenen Kreuzchen.

Grünstadt station also lies on the Palatine Northern Railway, which in parts runs alongside the German Wine Route in the southerly direction to Neustadt an der Weinstraße.

Furthermore, the re-opened Eis Valley Railway runs into the Palatinate Forest to the Eiswoog (a reservoir and hiking destination) near Ramsen.