Messel

Messel
Messel
Municipality
	Museum of Fossils
	Coat of arms
	Location of Messel within Darmstadt-Dieburg district
	Messel Messel
	Coordinates: 49°56′N 08°44′E / 49.933°N 8.733°E
Country	Germany
State	Hesse
Admin. region	Darmstadt
District	Darmstadt-Dieburg
Government
• Mayor (2022–28)	Thorsten Buhrmester
Area
• Total	14.82 km2 (5.72 sq mi)
Elevation	172 m (564 ft)
Population (2022-12-31)
• Total	4,194
• Density	280/km2 (730/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+01:00 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+02:00 (CEST)
Postal codes	64409
Dialling codes	06159
Vehicle registration	DA / DI
Website	www.messel.de

Messel is a municipality in the district of Darmstadt-Dieburg in Hesse near Frankfurt am Main in Germany.

The village is first mentioned, as Masilla, in the Lorsch codex. Messel was the property of the lords of Groschlag from ca. 1400 to 1799. After the extinction of the Groschlag male lineage, the village would have passed to the Archbishopric of Mainz but the population refused to accept this transition and paid homage to the daughters of the Groschlag family instead. The minister of the archbishopric, von Albini, consequently occupied the village with a force of 50 hussars. In 1806, the village fell to the Grand Duchy of Hesse.

The nearby Messel pit is an important site for Eocene fossils.