Few sights along Germany's Mosel River are as instantly captivating as the silhouette of Reichsburg Cochem rising more than a hundred metres above the water on its conical hilltop. With pointed turrets, slate-grey roofs, and curtain walls that seem to grow organically from the cliff face, the castle resembles something dreamed up by a fairy-tale illustrator rather than a real fortress. Yet Reichsburg Cochem is very real, and its thousand-year history embraces medieval emperors, French invasions, a Romantic-era reinvention, and one of Germany's most picturesque modern attractions.
The castle dominates the small wine town of Cochem in the Rhineland-Palatinate region, an hour's drive west of Koblenz. Together with the surrounding vineyards that climb the surrounding slopes, it forms a landscape so quintessentially German that travellers often pause on the riverbank simply to confirm it is not a film set.
