Eltz Castle

Burg Eltz is the castle that picture books promised: a cluster of towers, half-timbered gables and slate spires packed onto a seventy-metre rock that the little Elzbach river wraps around on three sides, deep in the woods above the Moselle between Koblenz and Trier. It is also a rarity — one of only a handful of castles in the Eifel never destroyed — and it has belonged to the same family, the Eltz, since the twelfth century. By 1157 the fortress already guarded the trade routes between the Moselle and the Eifel for Frederick Barbarossa's empire.

The reason it looks like a small town rather than a single fortress is inheritance. Eltz is a Ganerbenburg, a castle held jointly by several heirs: three branches of the family each built their own residential block inside a shared defensive ring. The Romanesque keep called Platteltz is the oldest part; the Rübenach house followed in 1472, the ten-storey Greater Rodendorf house was begun in 1470 and finished around 1520, and the Kempenich house replaced the old hall in 1615. Up to eight storeys high and thirty to forty metres tall, the towers hold more than a hundred rooms. The only serious fighting in its history came in 1331–36, when the Archbishop of Trier besieged the castle from a counter-castle, Trutzeltz, whose ruined walls can still be seen on the slope above.

Inside, the Rübenach and Rodendorf wings are open to visitors — a late Gothic banner hall with a vaulted ceiling, a Rübenach bedchamber with richly painted walls, and a treasury of gold, silver and porcelain, plus an armoury. The Kempenich third is still lived in by the family. The castle's portrait was familiar to every German between 1965 and 1992: it was engraved on the 500-Deutsche Mark note, and a path from the car park passes the very viewpoint used for the banknote.

Getting there

Eltz lies about 16 km from Mayen and near the village of Wierschem, where the castle car park is; a shuttle bus runs from there to the gate, or you can walk down through the forest. By train, the nearest station is Hatzenport on the Moselle line, with bus 365 to the car park in season; a classic alternative is the 2.5 km forest walk from Moselkern (about 45 minutes). The nearest airport is Frankfurt-Hahn (HHN), about 29 km away. The castle opens seasonally, roughly from spring to early November.