Stolzenfels Castle

Stolzenfels Castle was a ruined 13th-century fortress on the left bank of the Rhine until it was gifted to Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia, later King Frederick William IV, in 1823. He commissioned the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the leading Prussian architect of the 19th century, to rebuild it as a Gothic Revival palace. Schinkel produced the overall design, while construction supervision was carried out by his student Friedrich August Stuler. The result is one of the finest examples of Rhine Romanticism, the German equivalent of the Gothic Revival movement in Britain. The castle consists of a gatehouse, a main residential wing with crenellated towers and pointed-arch windows, a grand hall with a rib-vaulted ceiling and Gothic-style furniture, a chapel on the upper floor, and a series of rooms decorated with wall paintings of medieval and historical subjects. The terraced gardens step down toward the river, laid out by Peter Joseph Lenne with rose beds, climbing plants, and a geometric layout that mediates between the castle and the natural landscape. The castle sits opposite the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle in Koblenz, visible from the Deutsches Eck. It is accessible by a steep walk from Koblenz-Stolzenfels railway station. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site as part of the Upper Middle Rhine.