Palatinate, the name of two States, originally one, of the old German empire, one called the Lower Palatinate or the Palatinate of the Rhine, partitioned in 1815 among the States of Baden, Bavaria, Prussia, and Hesse-Darmstadt, and the other called the Upper Palatinate, now nearly all included in Bavaria; the former has for principal towns Spires and Landau, and the latter Ratisbon.