Drachenfels castle

The ruined Drachenfels castle in the Siebengebirge is the remnant of a hilltop castle at 321 m above sea level, begun in 1138 by the Archbishop of Cologne Arnold I and bought and completed in 1149 by Gerhard von Are, the provost of the St Cassius collegiate church in Bonn. It stands on the mountain of the same name.

The probably most famous burgrave, Godart, became very wealthy through the trachyte of the Drachenfels, the most important building material for Cologne Cathedral.

In 1632 Protestant Swedish troops captured the Drachenfels; they were driven out again the following year by Spanish troops. This prompted the Cologne elector Ferdinand to raze the outworks in 1634 in order to prevent further fighting over control of the castle. After the damage sustained up to 1634 the castle was never repaired again.

Over time the trachyte quarries advanced right up to the summit. When complete destruction threatened from 1807 onwards, quarrying was prohibited, and subsequently, in 1836, the summit was bought by the Prussian government.

On 18 October 1819 students from Bonn climbed the Drachenfels to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig. Among them was Heinrich Heine, who described this fraternity outing in his poem "Die Nacht auf dem Drachenfels".

In 1967 there were major rockfalls. Between 1971 and 1973 the summit was secured with steel anchors and concrete reinforcement.

Machine-translated from “Burg Drachenfels (Siebengebirge)” on the German Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Drachenfels castle ranks #4,014 of 8,134 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #313 of the 505 mapped in Germany. Founded 1138, it is older than 84% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 564 atlas entries founded in the 12th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 3,121 times in the last 60 days, more than 76% of the atlas. 11 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Cologne, 36 km away. See how Germany compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia (in German) ↗