The four-castle town of Neckarsteinach lies on the Neckar in the Bergstraße district in the southernmost part of Hesse, Germany, 15 km east of Heidelberg.

Both by way of transport and culture, Neckarsteinach's location in the Neckar valley more tightly links it with the North Baden area around Heidelberg than with the rest of Hesse.

It lies mainly on the Neckar's north bank along the B 37 and the Neckartalbahn (railway) and is Hesse's and the Bergstraße district's southernmost town, 15 km east of Heidelberg.

Along the former railway spur line to Schönau, a further population centre was built to the northwest, that is to say, behind the Burgberg (“Castle Mountain”).

In the east of town lies a smaller industrial area, a shipyard that arose out of shipbuilding, south of the B 37 on the Neckar marsh.

It should not be confused with the like-named place, also in the Neckar valley, west of Heidelberg and across the river from Ladenburg; that Neckarhausen is a constituent community of Edingen-Neckarhausen.

In the 7th century, the area around Neckarsteinach belonged to the Lobdengau, and passed along with it to the high monastery at Worms, when its fiefholder Bligger von Steinach was first mentioned.

Worms or Bligger and his sons and grandsons build the four Neckarsteinach castles, whose history is so tightly bound to the town's.

The Catholic League under Tilly, after conquering Ladenburg in the autumn of 1621 also took Neckarsteinach, whence the Dilsberg mountain fortress across the river was besieged in April 1622.

After retreating for a short while to Sinsheim, the Catholic troops came back for the Battle of Wimpfen and quartered themselves in the town, where the Plague then broke out.

After the Landschad family of Steinach died out in 1653, the Bishoprics of Worms and Speyer at first oversaw the fief, with the latter living at the Hinterburg.

In 1657, the episcopal fief was given to Wolf Heinrich Metternich von Burscheid, who had kinship with the Archbishop of Mainz, and who also acquired the allodial properties from the Landschads’ legacy.

In the Nine Years' War (1688–1697), French, Saxon, Brandenburgish and Bavarian troops passed through the Neckar valley and quartered there and are said to have made contributions.

Neckarsteinach and the outlying centre of Neckarhausen lie on the Neckartalbahn opened in 1879 and running from Heidelberg by way of Mosbach to Bad Friedrichshall, and since 2003 also served half-hourly by the RheinNeckar S-Bahn’s Lines 1 and 2.