Three Castles in the Fog

On November 7, 2021 we hiked a loop in the Taunus, the wooded hills north of Frankfurt, starting and ending in Kronberg and taking in three castles along the way: Kronberg, Falkenstein and Königstein. It came to 8.18 miles with 1,407 feet of climbing, and here is our AllTrails recording.

The day was foggy. So foggy that the lookouts, which are the whole point of a hike like this, gave us a view of white. We saw more of the forest and the ruins than the valley, and the fog made it feel like walking through the pages of a ghost story.

Kronberg

Kronberg literally means "crown mountain." The Burg Kronberg is a rock castle built between 1220 and 1230 beside the Altkönig mountain, and the town grew up below it. Not far from where the loop starts is Schloss Friedrichshof, built between 1889 and 1893 for the dowager German Empress Victoria, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria, and named for her late husband, Emperor Frederick III. After World War II the U.S. Army used it as an officers' club, and today it is a hotel.

Into the Fog

From Kronberg the trail climbs north into the forest, toward the high point of the loop, the Bürgelplatte (Platte means "plateau"). Up there the view was hazy at best.

Falkenstein

Falkenstein means "falcon rock." Coming down toward the district of Falkenstein, which belongs to Königstein, we passed a string of things that had nothing to do with castles. At the edge of the forest is what I believe is the Jewish cemetery, established in 1809 and a protected monument, with around 89 surviving gravestones.

Falkenstein was once world famous for treating tuberculosis. In the 19th century the clean forest air of the Taunus made it a Kurort (a "cure place"), and Dr. Peter Dettweiler became known here for the Liegekur, the "lying cure," in which patients rested for hours on outdoor lounge chairs instead of exerting themselves. Doctors came from around the world to study it. The big sanatorium buildings that grew up around it still stand, and one of them, a timber-framed building with a clock tower, appeared out of the fog as we walked through.

Nearby is the Ehrenmal Falkenstein, the town's war memorial for its soldiers lost in the two World Wars, built from local stone as a terrace of curved steps with bronze plaques set into the walls. Ehrenmal literally means "honor mark."

Burg Falkenstein

From the village the path climbs through a nature reserve of mossy boulders and old stone steps, past the Hildablick, a viewpoint whose name means roughly "Hilda's view." In the fog there was no view to speak of, but the steps were beautiful.

The castle was built in the middle of the 14th century by the lords of Bolanden-Falkenstein and is first mentioned in 1364. It changed hands quickly after that, passing through the counts of Sponheim, the lords of Hattstein and the lords of Kronberg, and later the Bettendorf family, who lived in part of it until about 1780. After the Thirty Years' War it fell into decay, and it was gradually taken apart until 1842. Around 1500 the ring wall was reinforced with towers and a late-Gothic Bergfried (the keep, the castle's main tower) was added in what German castle people call Butterfassform, "butter-churn shape," because it is round and slightly bulging like an old wooden churn. The Bergfried stands about 18 meters tall, and the gateway you see today is a reconstruction. Falkenstein is on a marked route called the 3-Burgen-Weg (Three Castles Way), and a local history society looks after the ruin.

The Königstein Ruin

Königstein literally means "king's stone." The town is first mentioned in 1215, and the castle above it was probably built in the 12th century. The lords of Hagen-Münzenberg took it over in 1239, the lords of Bolanden-Falkenstein held the town from 1255 to 1418, and by 1581 it belonged to the Electorate of Mainz. In the early 17th century it was rebuilt as a fortress, and in 1796 French troops blew it up during the French Revolutionary Wars, maybe by accident. The ruin is the town's landmark today.

The Roman Frontier Next Door

The Taunus ridge just north of here was once the northern edge of the Roman Empire. The Limes Germanicus, a frontier of about 568 km (353 miles) with at least 60 forts and 900 watchtowers, ran across these hills, and the Upper Germanic and Raetian Limes were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2005 as part of the "Frontiers of the Roman Empire." The best place to see it is the Saalburg, a reconstructed Roman fort on the Taunus ridge near Bad Homburg. It was not on our route.

We will have to come back on a clear day to see what we missed from the lookouts.