The hollow in which Rhaunen lies was formed by the many brooks that flow together here and that shaped various alluvial fans, which have very loamy subsoil.

While the slopes are mostly covered with mixed forests, meadowland is to be found in the dales, and on the higher-lying terraces and hills, cropraising.

Even the many public buildings built in Rhaunen about the turn of the 20th century have unplastered walls made of slate quarrystone.

The high ridges, of the Idar Forest massif for example, are formed of the most extremely weathering-resistant Taunus quartzite, whose effect on the land is to leave it rather useless for agriculture, although not altogether unusable in forestry.

Besides Rhaunen itself, these were Bollenbach, Bruschied, Bundenbach, Gösenroth, Hausen, Krummenau, Laufersweiler, Lindenschied, Oberkirn, Schwerbach, Stipshausen, Sulzbach, Weitersbach and Woppenroth.

Territorial relations remained so until an end was put to the Old Empire in the late 18th century and the old mediaeval governmental body, the court, was likewise swept away.

After the French withdrew in 1814, Rhaunen found itself in Prussia’s new Rhine Province, also becoming the seat of a Bürgermeisterei (“mayoralty”) in the Bernkastel-Kues district.

Parts of the old high court district, however – Bundenbach, for instance – now belonged to the Principality of Birkenfeld, an exclave of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, most of whose territory was in what is now northwest Germany, with a coastline on the North Sea.

Even after the First World War, through the Weimar Republic and on through the time of the Third Reich, Rhaunen was the administrative seat for the surrounding villages.

The Baroque house at Otto-Conradt-Straße 5 (until 1978, Am Bach 5) was the Waldgravial Oberamtshaus (administrative centre of the Oberamt), and later, through inheritance, it fulfilled the same function for the comital family of Salm.

Its development peaked in Prussian times when it had the mayor's office, the Amt court and prison on the way out of the village towards Hausen, the chief forester's house on Hauptstraße, a notary's office, the cadastral office – later a professional college – on Poststraße on the way out of the village towards Bundenbach, a dairy likewise there, Catholic and Evangelical churches, a synagogue on Salzengasse and a hospital on the way out of the village towards Stipshausen, although this last site has been occupied since the 1960s by the Verbandsgemeinde administration building.

The old neighbourhoods can still be made out in the three heavily built-up blocks bounded by Otto-Conradt-Straße (formerly called Am Bach, for its geographical location alongside the brook), Unterdorf, Hauptstraße, Straße am Wartenberg and Marktplatz (“Marketplace”).

This seemingly odd location is explained by the church's construction on top of an existing building – one of Roman origin.

The municipal election held on 7 June 2009 yielded the following results:[5] Rhaunen's mayor is Manfred Klingel,[6] and his deputies are Sascha Diepmanns, Anneliese Hammes and Andreas Endres.

[7] The German blazon reads: In schrägrechts geteiltem Schild, oben in Gold ein roter, blaubewehrter und -gezungter Löwe.

Standing on a bridge over the ugly concrete channel through which the Rhaunelbach runs within the village – it is a flood-control measure – is a bronze statue, a personification of the Bachspautzer (roughly “Brook Spitter”), a traditional nickname for people from Rhaunen.

The ancient menhir standing at the way out of the village towards Stipshausen, a quartzite block known as the Königsstein (“King’s Stone”), is not a natural monument in the usual sense, but the slate plaque there identifies it as such.

Rhaunen offers the surrounding area many services, including physicians, authorities, churches, schools, workshops, filling stations and shops for daily and occasional needs, which can all be found in the village.