Handpicked experience · Frankfurt
Frankfurt, Germany
A day out of Frankfurt into a sixty-five kilometre gorge holding around forty castles, almost none of which were built to defend anything.
A double-decker circuit of Frankfurt taking in the Römer, St Paul's Church, the cathedral, the Goethe House and the Hauptwache
The coach run west from Frankfurt into the UNESCO-listed Upper Middle Rhine Valley
A cruise on the Rhine, with the castles and the terraced vineyards on either bank
Lunch at a restaurant by the water, followed by a tasting of the local wine
Around eight hours in all, back in Frankfurt the same day
The stretch of the Rhine between Bingen and Koblenz is the most heavily castled river valley on earth, with something like forty fortresses and ruins standing over sixty-five kilometres of water. It is on the UNESCO list, it grows some of the steepest vineyards in Europe, and the reason all of it exists is money rather than war.
The morning covers Frankfurt from an open-topped bus, and the coach then runs west to the gorge. The middle of the day is spent on the water and at a table beside it, before the return in the late afternoon.
The fact that reorganises the whole view. Before roads and railways, the Rhine was the trade route through the middle of Europe, and every lord whose land touched it built a tower, stretched a chain across the water and charged the boats going past. At the peak there were more than sixty such collection points between Switzerland and the sea, some within sight of each other. What looks like a defensive line is a queue of medieval customs posts, and the romantic silhouettes on the ridges are the profits.
Watch for it near Kaub. A small white castle with a pointed prow sits on a rock in mid-channel, built in the 1320s purely to take tolls and positioned so that no boat could slip past on either side. Vessels were stopped by a chain and held there until they had settled up; those that refused were kept in a wooden float lowered into the well. It has never been anything but a cash desk, and it is still there in the middle of the current.
At the narrowest point the river squeezes to little more than a hundred metres wide and drops to about twenty-five deep, with the current turning back on itself against a slate cliff rising a hundred and thirty metres. Boats genuinely came to grief there for centuries. The golden-haired woman who supposedly lured them is not ancient folklore: she was invented by Clemens Brentano in a poem in 1801 and made famous by Heinrich Heine twenty-three years later. The danger was always the hydraulics.
Worth knowing before the glass. Those terraces face south across dark slate that absorbs the day's heat and gives it back overnight, which is what ripens Riesling this far north. Some of the plots are steep enough that they cannot be worked by machine at all, and the fruit comes down by monorail winch or on someone's back. The wine you are given tastes the way it does because of that rock.
A practical caveat. This is the busiest inland waterway in Europe and it is not always navigable for passenger traffic: in the drought of 2018 the level fell far enough to halt cargo shipping altogether, and after heavy rain the current runs too fast for the landing stages. Sailings are cancelled in both conditions. Check before you travel in a very dry August or a wet February.
Said plainly. The city had the largest half-timbered old quarter in Germany until March 1944, when it was destroyed in a single night. What stands on the square today is reconstruction, and the newest block of it was only finished in 2018. It is done well and it is worth seeing; it is simply not old, and knowing that makes the rest of the morning read differently.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Because the Rhine was the trade route through Europe and every lord whose land touched it built a tower, chained the water and charged passing boats. At the peak there were over sixty such collection points between Switzerland and the sea.
A customs station built on a mid-channel rock in the 1320s, positioned so no boat could pass on either side. Vessels were stopped by a chain and those who refused to settle were held in a wooden float lowered into the well.
No. The siren was invented by Clemens Brentano in a poem of 1801 and popularised by Heinrich Heine in 1824. The genuine danger was the hydraulics: the river narrows to about a hundred metres and the current doubles back against the cliff.
The dark slate absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night, which is what ripens Riesling this far north. Some plots are too steep for machinery and the fruit comes down by winch or by hand.
Yes, in both directions. Prolonged drought drops the level too low, as in 2018 when cargo traffic stopped entirely, and heavy rain makes the current too fast for the landing stages.
No. Germany's largest half-timbered quarter stood there until it was destroyed in March 1944. What you see is reconstruction, the newest section of it completed in 2018.