When we travel these days, we often drive or fly.
In earlier times, the rivers were the highways. Big and long rivers, like the Rhine River in Germany were important for delivering people and things.
[Is that why Amazon is named after a river in Brazil? I don’t know, do you?]
If you visit, you can stay at the nearby youth hostel or the YMCA hotel in another castle, high up in the village of Kaub. Down at the Rhine riverbank, you take a small ferry across to the island.
This castle is the perfect place for collecting tolls from ships bringing cargo up and down the Rhine River. If you’ve ever seen a modern tollbooth, you’ll agree that this is about the fanciest tollbooth ever!
The first tolls were collected almost 800 years ago in 1257. The castle changed hands several times and new parts were added and reinforced. The Prussians finally stopped charging ships tolls here in 1866. Since 1946, the castle belongs to the state of Rhineland Pfalz in Germany.
The tall steps keep the castle dry when the Rhine River gets high from too much rain.
The castle has lots of staircases, open walkways for croquet or chase scenes.
Queen Ash’s office (the Kommandant used it first 🙂 gives her a good view of possible “customers”. She doesn’t want to miss a chance to collect a toll from a passing ship.
Tired of the view from your window? Take a mini-tour of an 800-year-old tollbooth. #SevenKingdomsFairyTales
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A huge baking oven (sorry, my photo is too dark!),
A chain to block the river so ships had to pay their toll,
A privy, and
A water dungeon where you had to balance on round board hanging from a rope.
© Laurel Decher, 2020.
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The state of Rhineland Pfalz GDKE website has more insider tours of the Pfalzgrafenstein castle (including a 360 view of the inside!) and more details in English about the region and surrounding castles.
Germany’s Rhine and Mosel castles are so inspiring! Rooks and barges and castles and landscape that says Fairy Tale in capital letters!
Whenever I go through on the train (or take a boat cruise), I can’t stop looking out the windows at the castles.
It’s a magical feeling of being inside a model train landscape–is it any wonder that this area inspired so many of my Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tales?
Find out more about the books for ages 9 to 12.
