Mettmann

Mettmann is a town in the northern part of the Bergisches Land, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, east of Dusseldorf and west of Wuppertal. It is the administrative centre of the district of Mettmann, which is the most densely populated rural district in the country. The settlement grew on the old trade route known as the strata coloniensis. Under the name Medamana, meaning between the streams, it first appears in a charter of the Carolingian king Louis the Child in 904, so it has existed in the written record for more than eleven centuries. By 1363 it was one of eight administrative burghs of the Earldom of Berg and Jülich, and it later gained the right to build a wall, choose a mayor and collect tolls and taxes, which helped it develop as a trading place. It was part of Napoleon's Grand Duchy of Berg from 1806 and passed to Prussia after 1813. A local variety of Limburgish, Metmannsch Platt, is spoken in the town.