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Four essays covering the things that come up on every castle page and are tedious to repeat: why the castles are sited as they are, why most of them are ruins, why the ones that are not look the way they do, and what the technical vocabulary means.
Tolls, chains and the economics of a castle
Almost every castle in the gorge is a revenue instrument first and a fortification second. Reading them any other way makes their siting incomprehensible.
1688–1697: the destruction of the Rhine castles
Most of the ruins in the gorge share a single cause and, within a few years, a single date. It was not slow decay; it was deliberate demolition by engineers.
Rhine romanticism and the rebuilt castle
Between about 1820 and 1900 a substantial part of the gorge's skyline was invented. Knowing which part matters more than it might seem.
Bergfried, shield wall, butter-churn: a short typology
A working vocabulary for the forms that recur in the gorge, with the caveats that the guidebooks tend to leave out.