2000 years are like a day's holiday

The Romans came to the Romantic Rhine more than 2000 years ago, and clearly felt at home. Their legacy is still evident in many places, and the ground has proved a treasure trove, yielding many more traces of their lives here. The Limes, recently inscribed as a UNESCO world heritage site and once the boundary line between the Romans and the Teutons, begins here in Rheinbrohl.

Until recent times the Rhine was a frontier and a political football for warring factions, royals and churchmen, and the eye of a needle through which traders had to pass. The Middle Ages were a golden age for the Rhine Valley. The impressive town walls, towers and churches of Bacharach and Oberwesel bear witness to that era, along with the 40 or so castles and palaces where princes met to elect their kings and knights rode off to the Holy Land. The Rhine was no less important to merchants and traders, but was often an expensive route, as there were many castles and toll stations along the way, all demanding payment in return for passage.

Most of the proud castles and fortresses of the Rhine Valley fell to the troops of the French Sun King in the 17th century. Blasted to ruins and burned to the ground, in the 19th century they became a principal attraction, symbolising the highly romantic perception of nature that formed the basis of Rhine Romanticism. An untamed river, steep rocky inclines and ruined castles perched high atop the cliffs like eyries, were, for many travellers the very embodiment of a wild, romantic landscape. An appeal which remains undiminished to this day.