Marksburg Castle : part 1

Marksburg Castle Tour : much of the description here comes from  Rick Steves’ site (with additions describing our day on the Marksburg Saturday, May 4^th, by Rebecca Stay).

Thanks to its formidable defenses, medieval invaders decided to give Marksburg a miss. This best-preserved castle on the Rhine can be toured only with a guide, and tours are generally in German only, but there is often one in English at noon.

 

  Marksburg Castle is in the Rhine valley, about an hour west of us, over the Tannus Mountains (the drive reminded us of Pennsylvania) and past fields of flowering mustard plants.  We arrived at 11:45 am.

The  Marksburg caps a hill above the Rhine town of Braubach.  We drove back behind the hill and found FREE (boy, is that rare in Germany!) public parking across the street from the cemetery. 

We followed the signs to the old path from the Middle Ages which snakes up the side of the hill.

The German sign says “Footpath to the Castle.  In the Middle Ages this was the only usable path for donkey carts, horses and wagons, to get to the castle.” 

The trail was rather steep, and cut into a steeper hillside.  Retaining walls – with stairs – keep the path from washing away.  (You can now drive your car up to an upper parking lot, we later found out, but there is a charge for parking there).

The trail led to the outer gate, which was a large drawbridge gate over a moat.

Outside of the door is covered in iron, mined locally.

Just after the entry was a bookstore where you could buy pages from old books : $1000 for an illuminated page from the 1400’s.

Next we wandered around until we figured out that you buy the ticket inside the souvenir shop where they have costumes and swords for children of all ages.  

Then we waited just outside the Fuchstor or Fox Gate. (Notice the wallflowers)

There is a great view of the Rhine river valley from here. 

While the dramatic castles lining the Rhine are generally Romantic rebuilds, Marksburg is the real thing — nearly all original construction. It's littered with bits of its medieval past, like the big stone ball that was swung on a rope to be used as a battering ram just after you pass thru the Schartentor or Notches Gate .

 Ahead, notice how the inner gate – the Vogsturm or Castellan’s tower - originally tall enough for knights on horseback to gallop through — was made smaller, therefore safer from enemies on horseback.

Passing through the final gate, you begin to climb the "Knights' Stairway," hewn into the slate bedrock upon which the castle is built and pass under the murder hole — handy for pouring boiling pitch on invaders. (Germans still say someone with bad luck "has pitch on his head.") On the right is a display of the coats of arms of the nobles who owned the castle over the centuries.

The first mention of the burg in writing was in 1231 and the Counts of Eppstein- archbishops and electors of Mainz -owned the castle first.  

.  In 1283, financial troubles drove the first family to sell to the powerful and wealthy Katzenelnbogen family (who made the castle into what you see today). 

When the last count died in 1479, the castle passed to the Landgraves of Hesse through marriage.  

When Napoleon took this region in 1803, an Austrian family who sided with the French – the Duchy of Nassau - got the keys and used the castle as a home for disabled soldiers and as a prison. 

When Prussia took the region in 1866, control passed to a friend of the Prussians who had a passion for medieval things — typical of this Romantic period. Then it was sold to the German Castles Association in 1900. Its offices are in the main palace at the top of the stairs.

Romanesque Great Hall – the oldest residential building dates to 1290.   White outlines mark where the larger original windows were located, before they were replaced by easier-to-defend smaller ones. On the far right, a bit of the original plaster survives. Slate, which is soft and vulnerable to the elements, needs to be covered — in this case, by plaster. Because this is a protected historic building, restorers can use only the traditional plaster methods...but no one knows how to make plaster that works as well as the 800-year-old surviving bits.

Notice how the older, bigger window has been bricked in and made into an arrow slot.

Cannons: the small battery was built in 1711, the Great in 1589.  The oldest cannon here — a copy of one from 1450 — was back-loaded. This was good because many cartridges could be preloaded. But since the seal was leaky, it wasn't very powerful. The bigger, more modern cannons — from 1640 — were one piece and therefore airtight, but had to be front-loaded. They could easily hit targets across the river from here. Stone balls were rough, so they let the explosive force leak out. The best cannonballs were stones covered in smooth lead — airtight and therefore more powerful and more accurate.

Walking along an outer wall around the Rhineezwinger or Upper Bailey, you'll see 160 plants from the Middle Ages — used for cooking, medicine, and witchcraft. The bailey was originally 5 feet lower making it hard to get out of or into. 

The bailey (the area formed by the outer defensive wall of a castle) has been filled in so visitors can see over the wall down into the beautiful Rhine valley. You will also see the lower Bailey below you which has also been filled up about 6 feet. Here is a view from a helicopter where you can see the baileys better :

To be continued. . . .