Visit to Burg Eltz or Marksburg
 

We will be staying in the Rhein area this fall and will have a car for tooling around. If you had time to only visit one castle and had to figure in that one had difficulty negotiating lots of steps or steep inclines, which castle would you recommend? Thanks.

Burg Eltz, but i'm not sure if you can drive to the castle or have to walk the 400 steps. ANyone else?

You can't drive right to either one, as far as I know. Burg Eltz is better, but Marksburg is definitely easier. Not as many steps, and getting there is easy, as there's a little shuttle train from the center of town.

Both are excellent, but I think both will also be very difficult for someone who has trouble with steps.

You can drive pretty close to Burg Eltz (if you come from the north side) and then there is a van that you can pay for a shuttle ride from the parking lot to the castle itself.

Perhaps Rheinfels would be a better choice. It is not intact like the other two, but I seem to remember fewer steps there.

I arrived at the Marksburg by train on the day before the boats started to run on the river, so the tram was not running. I had to walk from town up the path to the castle.

The walk looked daunting from town, but turned out to be not all that bad. However, I would not recommend it to JN.

I just remember that once I was almost to the castle there was a parking lot for those who had driven up. Seemed like the walk from there was on a paved road and pretty easy.

Thanks folks. Larry--mention is made on the Marksburg website of a parking area within 5 mins of the castle entrance. So, sounds like you're right.

We haven't been to Marksburg yet, but my husband and I did visit Burg Eltz last July and loved it. We parked and then walked ... but there is a van at the parking lot that will drive you right up to the castle.

We drove to Burg Eltz from St. Goar. I'm not sure I would recommend it. It really took too long to drive there and while the castle looks amazing in it's location you see very little of the inside. It would have been worth it if we could have hiked the grounds for a while and it doesn't sound like you'll be able to do that. So, you'll have a long drive there, then you'll have to take the van down and back to the castle, and then take the long drive back. If you go, be aware that it is an extremely steep incline.