KAISERSWERTH IMPERIAL CASTLE RUINS
Barbarossa’s Palace and Riverside Cafes
Kaiserswerth is a district just to the north of the main city of Dusseldorf, one of the oldest districts of the city. Set along the Rhine River in the shade of Linden trees. The area is most notable as the site of the ruins of the medieval imperial palace of the German Holy Roman Emperor Friederich Barbarossa the “Kaiserpfalz”. The castle on the banks of the Rhine River was first constructed during the reign of the Salian German King Henry III in the 10th Century, but greatly enlarged by the famed Staufer family “red beard” Barbarossa between 1174 and 1184 when he decided to move the river toll collection from Tiel in the lowlands of Holland up river, building a fortress in the northern reaches of his Palatinate (Pfalz) domain, to guard the river approach. The empire stretched from northern Italy to the north sea and though the castle gets its reputation from Barbarossa, it was never a permanent residence, and he is only known to have visited once, with the castle work continued under his son, Henry IV.
After the Staufers, the castle at Kaiserswerth came into the possession of the Prince-Bishop Electors of Cologne in 1298 under King Albrecht I. In the 1400’s the Cologne electors expanded the castle into one of the most powerful fortresses in the region until the late 1700s. Much of the visible form of the structure dates from the 15th Century but the castle ruins feature impressive walls up to 15 feet thick in the older sections. Kaiserswerth means Imperial Island (or “island worthy of an emperor” to be more precise) and in the middle ages the land where the castle and the monastery of St Silbertus stood was surrounded by the Rhine on one side and an artificial defensive canal on the other, but during a campaign to free the the Bishop Otto I of Oldenburg from captivity in 1215, the river was dammed and the canal silted in, making the castle vulnerable to attack from the land. so the Kaiser’s island is now dry land, though the flood plain of the river is clearly evident.
Visiting Kaiserswerth
The picturesque castle complex in a park setting is open from 9 am to 6pm daily from April through October. After a visit to the castle, follow the Burgweg (Castle Walk), the tree shaded lane past the castle ruins to the cafes and beer garden restaurants along the edge of the river popular in the summertime.
The district of Kaiserswerth which grew around the old medieval fort is defined by a beautiful collection of Baroque era buildings from the 17th and 18th Centuries when the district was expanding in the age in international trade. Among the buildings is the church of St. Suitbertus Basilica on Stiftsplatz, is an ancient edifice of triple nave of Romanesque pillars with a magnificent gilded shrine holding the relics of Saint Suitbertus, an English Anglo-Saxon monk who came to the German Rhineland about the year 700. © Bargain
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Kaiserswerth
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See Also:
DUSSELDORF'S KARNIVAL - FOOLISH SEASON
