Sooneck Castle

On Saturday I told you I would tell you about Sooneck Castle, the next castle I sailed by on my Viking River Cruise along the Rhine.

It is still considered to be part of the village of Niederheimbach, yet is also very close to Trechtingshausen and it’s strip mines, which you can see behind the castle in the picture above.

There are also lots of vineyards lining the steep banks of the Rhine here, as in many of the other little towns we have sailed by on this lovely afternoon.

I even spotted this tiny little tower above the vineyards.  Not sure what it was, but there were people going inside exploring.  As with most of the castles and villages in this area, they were heavily destroyed during the Nine Years War, so it could be a casualty of that time.

Sooneck gets its name from the Soon Forest that surrounds it.  It also borders the Bingen Forest and dates originally to about 1271.

You can see that the castle also sits high above the Rhine.

I can imagine it must have incredible views, except for the strip mine next to it.  From what I read though, the quarries in this area provide stone for the coastal areas of the Netherlands to help provide protection from the water.  Interesting little fact.

Sooneck Castle was destroyed several times, including lastly during the Nine Years War and was rebuilt by Prince Frederick William IV of Prussia as a hunting lodge in the mid part of the nineteenth century during the Romantic Reconstruction period.

After World War I it came to be owned by the state, as most other historic castles did at the time.

It is now owned by the Ministry of Castles and is open for tours.

The public areas are furnished in Biedermeier and neo gothic styles and there are lots of paintings by German artists, along with hunting artifacts, since it was reconstructed for that purpose.

It is hard to tell how large it is compared to the size of the forest that surrounds it.

But once you start counting the different levels, you can only imagine its size.

It is one of those castles that is built upward as opposed to outward.  There was such a small outcropping of stone for the foundation, there was nowhere else to go but up.

And so we said good bye to Burg Sooneck, it was time to sail to our next little village along this stretch of the Rhine.

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This is not a sponsored post.  
This is my experience from my trip with Viking River Cruises. 

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