Monreal: The Village of Two Castles

Monreal is one of my favorite places we visited in Germany. It is a tiny half-timbered village tucked into a narrow valley in the Eifel, with two ruined castles on the rock spur above it and a stream running right through the middle of the lanes. On March 13, 2022 we walked the Traumpfad Monrealer Ritterschlag, and it was a perfect day for it: blue sky, a hint of early spring, and almost no leaves yet on the trees, which made for great views.

The Village

The houses here are Fachwerk (literally "compartment work", the red-and-white timber framing the region is known for), and about 40 of them survive. Most of the old town dates from the 17th and 18th centuries, but a few are much older. The Viergiebelhaus ("four-gable house"), built around 1452, is now the town hall. The little stream is the Elzbach ("Elz brook"), and the lanes and bridges follow it.

Monreal was first mentioned in 1193 as Cunisberch ("king's mountain"), according to one local history, and the name later became Mons Regalis, Latin for "royal mountain", and then Monreal. The same source says archaeologists found older Celtic settlement traces on the bank of the Elzbach. It got town rights in 1306 and lost them again in 1795 under the French. After the Thirty Years' War it became an important cloth-making town, with wool from local sheep feeding the weavers until industrialization put an end to it in the 1800s. It has not had an easy history. A flood in 1598 left half the town underwater, Swedish troops devastated it in 1632, and the troops of Louis XIV burned it in 1689. Starting in the 1930s, wealthy people from Bonn began buying holiday homes here, and the village picked up the nickname "Bonnreal".

The Two Castles

Above the village stand the Löwenburg ("lion castle") and the Philippsburg ("Philip's castle"). The Löwenburg was first recorded in 1229 and built by Count Hermann III of Virneburg, reportedly on land that belonged to his brother Philipp. The brothers settled the dispute by treaty. The smaller Philippsburg is nicknamed "das Rech" (the roe deer), because it is small next to the lion. One story says Philipp built it in answer to his brother, but the hiking map in the village says it is probably the older of the two, a country house of the Virneburgs. Historians don't seem to agree.

The Virneburg family had close ties to Cologne. Count Henry II of Virneburg became Archbishop of Cologne in 1306 and held the office for 26 years. That is the same Cologne where we climbed the cathedral, in the Köln post. Swedish troops damaged the castle's fortifications in 1632, and on April 28, 1689 French troops destroyed it. The ruins passed to Prussia in 1815 and safety work started in 1970. The Löwenburg's keep is about 25 meters tall with walls about 3 meters thick, and its entrance is raised and faces the valley, away from the likely enemy.

We climbed that keep, and it is high. It's where we got the views of the whole village below. (I've read that the tower is now closed for restoration, so check before you go.)

The Trail

The Ritterschlag is a certified premium trail, a Traumpfad ("dream path"). Ritterschlag is the "knighting", literally the "knight-strike" of the sword blow that makes a knight, and the trail is a nod to the knights of Monreal. It was voted Germany's most beautiful hiking trail in 2011. According to AllTrails it is a 13.5 km (8.4 mile) loop with about 1,456 feet of climbing, rated moderate. After the castles it drops into forest with steep winding paths and narrow gorges, has several big views, and returns along the Elzbach.

Along the way we passed a Wegekreuz ("wayside cross"), one of the many such crosses scattered through the Eifel. The inscription starts "Gewidmet zur Ehre Gottes" ("dedicated to the honor of God") and names Johan Joseph Kerpen and the family from Monreal, dated 1847. Snowdrops were blooming at the foot of it.

At the end, back in the village, a hand-painted Wanderkarte ("hiking map") told the story in a timeline, and it adds a few things I couldn't find elsewhere. It says Monreal began as a Frankish settlement modeled on Roman ones. A knight named Emmericus of Monreal founded the Engelport monastery on the Mosel in 1220. Count Philipp II of Monreal and his wife Johanna of Horn built the parish church in 1460, and the village's cloth industry peaked in 1765 with 40 weavers and 64 looms. French troops marched in during 1794, and between 1794 and 1814 about 7,000 soldiers were quartered in the village. The railway arrived in 1892.

There are also Roman sites in the area. The Römerwarte Katzenberg near Mayen is a rebuilt Roman hilltop fort from about 300 AD with about 70 meters of reconstructed wall and two towers, which would make a good follow-up trip.

Possum et ego.