9 Best Sights in The Rhineland, Germany

This castle was the home of Rudolf von Hapsburg from 1282 to 1286. To establish law and order on the Rhine, he destroyed the neighboring castles of Burg Reichenstein and Burg Sooneck and hanged their notorious robber barons from the oak trees around the Clemens Church, a late-Romanesque basilica near Trechtingshausen. The Gobelin tapestries, 15th-century stained glass, wall and ceiling frescoes, a floor of royal apartments, and antique furniture—including a rare "giraffe spinet," a harpsicord which Kaiser Wilhelm I is said to have played—are the highlights of a visit here. All of this is illuminated by candlelight on some summer Fridays. Rheinstein was the first of many a Rhine ruin to be rebuilt by a royal Prussian family in the 19th century.

First mentioned in 793, Basilika St. Martin was built on the site of a Roman temple. It's been destroyed and rebuilt a number of times since then and as a result is an interesting mix of architectural styles; the 11th-century crypt and Gothic and baroque furnishings make it worth a visit. It's a ten-minute walk from here to the 12th-century Drususbrücke, Germany's oldest medieval stone bridge, which runs over the Nahe.

Bingen was destroyed repeatedly by wars and fires; thus there are many ancient foundations but few visible architectural remains of the past. Since Celtic times the Kloppberg (Klopp Hill), in the center of town, has been the site of a succession of citadels, all named Burg Klopp, since 1282. Here you'll find a terrace with good views of the Rhine, the Nahe, and the surrounding hills, and from April to October you can climb the tower for a more lofty view.

A stylish castle hotel with two restaurants serving fresh and elegant cuisine, Reichenstein also has an interesting museum with beautiful period rooms, collections of decorative cast-iron slabs (from ovens and historical room-heating devices), hunting weapons and armor, and paintings. It's the only one of the area's three castles directly accessible by car.

Perched on the edge of the Soon (pronounced "zone") Forest, this imposing 11th-century castle houses a beautiful collection of Empire, Biedermeier, and neo-Gothic furnishings, medieval weapons, and paintings from the Rhine Romantic era.

Near the St. Roch Chapel, the Hildegard Forum has exhibits related to St. Hildegard of Bingen, the famous mystic and composer of the High Middle Ages, a medicinal medieval herb garden, and a restaurant serving tasty, wholesome foods (many based on Hildegard's theories of nutrition) and a substantial selection of local wines. The lunch buffet of soups, salads, mains, and sweets, is a very good value.

At this small but very well cared-for museum, you can see the most intact set of Roman surgical tools ever discovered (2nd century), period rooms from the Rhine Romantic era, and displays about Abbess St. Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), one of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages. An outspoken critic of papal and imperial machinations, she was a highly respected scholar, naturopath, and artist whose mystic writings and (especially) music became very popular starting in the 1990s, when her work was rediscovered and popularized by feminist religious scholars. An excellent illustrated booklet in English on Rhine Romanticism, The Romantic Rhine, is sold at the museum shop. The museum is housed in a former power station (1898) on the riverbank.

Looking west along the river from Bingen, you can just about spot the Mäuseturm, perched on a rocky island near the Binger Loch. The name derives from a gruesome legend. One version tells that during a famine in 969 the miserly Archbishop Hatto hoarded grain and sought refuge in the tower to escape the peasants' pleas for food. The stockpile attracted scads of mice to the tower, where they devoured everything in sight, including Hatto. In fact, the tower was built by the archbishops of Mainz in the 13th and 14th centuries as a Mautturm (watch tower and toll station) for their fortress, Ehrenfels, on the opposite shore (now a ruin). It was restored in neo-Gothic style by the king of Prussia in 1855, who also rebuilt Burg Sooneck, but you can't go inside.

The forested plateau of the Rochusberg (St. Roch Hill) is the pretty setting of the Rochuskapelle. Originally built in 1666 to celebrate the end of the plague, it has been rebuilt twice. On August 16, 1814, Goethe attended the consecration festivities, the forerunner of today's Rochusfest, a weeklong folk festival in mid-August. The chapel (open only for services) contains an altar dedicated to St. Hildegard and relics and furnishings from the convents she founded on the Ruppertsberg (in the suburb of Bingerbrück) and in Eibingen (east of Rüdesheim).