It is bounded in the south by the Wetterau and Rhine-Main Region, in the east by the Vogelsberg, and the Knüll, in the north by the Kellerwald and in the west by the Gladenbach Uplands.
Today the nature parks of the Lahn-Dill Uplands and the High Vogelsberg as well as the regions of Marburg and Giessen belong to the Upper Hesse.
[1] Due to the practice of partible inheritance, the lands of Upper and Lower Hesse were partitioned into separate states several times.
On the eve of the French Revolution (1789), most of historic Upper Hesse lay within northern Hesse-Darmstadt, except for the area around Marburg, which was part of Hesse-Kassel.
During the course of the German mediatization and Napoleonic wars, Hesse-Darmstadt gained territory from several former states contiguous with Upper Hesse, primarily from Solms-Laubach and the Principality of Isenburg.