Rhine Gorge

The Upper Middle Rhine, the 65 km stretch from Bingen and Rüdesheim to Koblenz, has been a trade route into central Europe since prehistoric times. Its steep sides have been terraced for vineyards for more than 1,000 years, and in the Middle Ages, as wealth grew, about 40 castles rose on the hilltops. The valley became a core region of the Holy Roman Empire.

In the Thirty Years' War the valley lay at the centre of the fighting and many castles were left in ruins. Stolzenfels, finished in 1259, was destroyed by the French in 1689 during the Nine Years' War. At the Loreley, where the river narrows to 130 metres below a rock 132 metres high, Clemens Brentano set a ballad in 1801, and Heinrich Heine wrote his poem Die Lorelei in 1824.

From the later 18th century the Romantics were drawn to the valley's scenery and ruined castles, and their interest shaped the 19th-century restoration and rebuilding of the castles. The valley became Prussian in the 19th century, and in 1823 the city of Koblenz gave the ruin of Stolzenfels to Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia. It was rebuilt as a palace, with the main buildings finished by 1842, and the valley was inscribed in 2002.