Chateau de Haut Koenigsbourg

The Chateau de Haut Koenigsbourg is the third most visited tourist  destination in France – after the Eiffel Tower and Mont Saint Michel.  Hands up now.  Who has heard of it? 

The Chateau dates back to the 12^th century, and has changed hands between bishops and dukes, belonged to a Swiss family with Hapsburg connections in the C15th, was demolished by the Swedes in the Thirty Years War etc.  Just your average Chateau.  But it is spectacularly positioned 750 metres above the Plain of the Rhine.  (How did they build it up there, way back then???)  

It was Kaiser Wilhelm himself who decided to restore it to its deserved glory, when after the Franco-Prussian War, it fell within his Empire.  The restoration which began then still goes on today – there is a massive crane suspended above the Chateau, and some parts are closed off while work progresses.

The actual rooms of the Chateau are probably more true in their presentation than many of those in the Chateaux of the Loire region.  There is no attempt to make things appear more comfortable than they surely were.  The function of the place as a strategic site is always apparent – slits in the walls of the keep look down on various approaches etc.  And  in the towers there are still the various generations of canons used over centuries.

The wonder of Haut Koenigsbourg is its position – and the aspect over the Plain of the Rhine is wondrous beyond words.  Villages dotted around amongst fields of vines, further away corn fields, the huge A35 autoroute snakes along the length of vision, and way beyond, the peaks of the German Schwarzwald define the horizon.  (A perfect Autumn day was a huge bonus).  It accords with the saying here about the Eiffel Tower – that the best view in Paris is from the Eiffel Tower, because that is the only place in Paris from which one cannot see it.  The wonder of Koenigsbourg is that it is there and what can be seen from it, more than the essence of the place itself.  Though that is remarkable enough.