The area is mountainous and belongs to the Devonian Dinant primary rocks, made up of a series of schists and grauwackes in an irregular flow created at the bottom of a sea that was shaken by volcanic eruptions.

The town is narrowly confined between the mountain side and the Bruche river, so a 610-metre road tunnel has been built in order to relieve traffic congestion.

It reappeared in the description of the boundaries of the lands of the abbey of Senones, under the name Neufville en Barembax; the name "new town" suggesting that it had recently been created.

The lands on which the town grew up was a former possession of the Counts of Nordgau, acquired from the last of the line, Frederick of Leiningen (Linange) in 1239 by Berthold I of Teck, bishop of Strasbourg.

Long-distance trade routes linking the animal markets of Frankfurt, Strasbourg and Nuremberg brought wine, fish, cereals, ironmongery, sheep, pigs, oxen and horses through the town.