Last Spring I had the opportunity to take a Viking River Cruise down the Rhine River through Holland, Germany, France and Switzerland. I have been telling you about my adventures here on the blog and I last left you with the story of the Bus Passing Rule on the road that lead to Marksburg Castle in Braubach, Germany. And I promised I would share my tour of the castle, so let me start now.
The castle sis high atop a hill overlooking the Rhine and the town of Braubach. We did not spend any time in Braubach, we docked long enough to load the buses and then the ship left to meet us at our next destination.
When we got to the top as far as the buses could go, we had to walk up to enter the castle. This was my fist up close view.
There was a huge, very high wall around the castle and all we really had a good view of was the Butter-churn tower. It is literally like a butter-churn. The top of the tower is narrower than the bottom and has a ledge for fighting. And you can see from above, there are a lot of other classic castle details going on here.
Like these cute painted shutters.
Today the castle is home to the German Castle Association. Their mission is to preserve castles in Germany and they have done a nice job here. Marksburg Castle dates to 1100.
Did I mention it was a long walk up? And that wall, it is several stories high.
Because this castle was never fully destroyed throughout its history, it is one of the principal castles in the Unesco World Heritage Rhine Gorge.
See what I mean about that wall? Oh, and see the rocks that the wall is built on top of? Well, they are obviously over my head, so there was definitely a challenge to overcome here if you wanted to think about trying to enter over the wall when you were trying to invade this gem.
From this view it looks kind of tiny, doesn’t it? Well, that definitely is misleading. But we are almost to the first gate.
And I will tell you about the first of several gates on the next post! Stay tuned!
This is not a sponsored post. This is my experience from my trip with Viking River Cruises. Email me to find out how you can save $100 when you book your first cruise with Viking through their referral program.
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