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TopicRhine 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.
The market for ruins
British and German travellers began arriving in numbers after 1815. Steam navigation from the 1820s and the railway along both banks from the 1840s turned a difficult journey into a weekend, and the ruins acquired a value they had not had since they stopped collecting tolls.
Prussian royal purchases followed: Rheinstein in 1823, Stolzenfels the same year by gift, and a run of lesser sites through the 1830s and 1840s. These were not conservation projects in any modern sense. They were commissions for new buildings on old sites.
What the rebuilders did
The reconstructions share a vocabulary: steep roofs, tall stepped gables, crenellation applied for silhouette rather than defence, and a great hall regardless of whether the original had one. Openings were enlarged for light and for the view, which no medieval builder would have accepted on an exposed elevation.
Claudius von Lassaulx at Rheinstein and Friedrich August Stüler at Stolzenfels were competent and serious architects, and the results are good buildings. They are simply not evidence for the fourteenth century.
Reading a rebuilt castle
A few practical tests. Look at the coursing: nineteenth-century work is usually more regular and its mortar joints thinner. Look at where the windows are: medieval openings avoid the weather side and the field of fire. Look at the roof pitch against the wall-heads, where a raised roof usually leaves a scar. And treat any tower that is perfectly circular in plan with suspicion.
None of this is an argument against the rebuilt castles. It is an argument for knowing what you are looking at.