H and I are in Wiesbaden (the main boulevard that runs past the storied
State Opera, wellness spa and casino usually is lined with international flags but the banners have been replaced for this month with pride flags) this weekend while he chairs a few seminars and I had the chance to take a long hike through the city via the Kurpark and Garten (
previously).
Walking along a short segment of the Hรถhenrhein trail following the Rambach valley to the district of Sonnenberg, I was rather deep in a an urban woodland until arriving at the foothills of the Taunus and dominated by the ruins of
Burg Sonnenberg hewn into a mountainous spur.
Although much of the thirteenth fortification has crumbed and was cannibalised as a quarry when the settlement below was devastated by a fire during the Thirty Years War one can still see the intact tower of the Bergfried and extensive defensive walls and imagine the castle protecting the Count of Nassau’s domain from raids of the Dukes of
Eppstein.
The two neighbouring and competing houses never settled a border dispute amongst themselves owing to overlapping jurisdictions that arose out of Wiesbaden’s imperial immediacy, a distinction that the city fought to keep for over a thousand years since the time of Charlemagne. Now the area is a venue for a series of open-air events and quite the staging arena especially in the summertime.
H and I are in Wiesbaden (the main boulevard that runs past the storied State Opera, wellness spa and casino usually is lined with international flags but the banners have been replaced for this month with pride flags) this weekend while he chairs a few seminars and I had the chance to take a long hike through the city via the Kurpark and Garten (previously).
Walking along a short segment of the Hรถhenrhein trail following the Rambach valley to the district of Sonnenberg, I was rather deep in a an urban woodland until arriving at the foothills of the Taunus and dominated by the ruins of Burg Sonnenberg hewn into a mountainous spur.
Although much of the thirteenth fortification has crumbed and was cannibalised as a quarry when the settlement below was devastated by a fire during the Thirty Years War one can still see the intact tower of the Bergfried and extensive defensive walls and imagine the castle protecting the Count of Nassau’s domain from raids of the Dukes of Eppstein.
The two neighbouring and competing houses never settled a border dispute amongst themselves owing to overlapping jurisdictions that arose out of Wiesbaden’s imperial immediacy, a distinction that the city fought to keep for over a thousand years since the time of Charlemagne. Now the area is a venue for a series of open-air events and quite the staging arena especially in the summertime.
