Drachenfels (Siebengebirge)
Encyclopedia
Mountain
Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River...
321 metres (1,053.1 ft) in the Siebengebirge
Siebengebirge
The Siebengebirge is a German range of hills to the East of the Rhine, southeast of Bonn, consisting of more than 40 mountains and hills. It is located in the municipalities of Bad Honnef and Königswinter. It is of volcanic origin and came into being between 28 and 15 million years ago...
mountain range
Mountain range
A mountain range is a single, large mass consisting of a succession of mountains or narrowly spaced mountain ridges, with or without peaks, closely related in position, direction, formation, and age; a component part of a mountain system or of a mountain chain...
near Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. The ruined castle
Castle
A castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble...
atop the mountain bears the same name. A newer castle, recently restored (2003) and down the Rhine, is named Schloss Drachenburg
Drachenburg Palace
Schloss Drachenburg is a private Villa in Palace style constructed in the late 19th century. In only two years 1882 till 1884 it was completed on the Drachenfels hill in Königswinter, a German town at the Rhine River near the city of Bonn...
.
A German legend recounts that Siegfried
Sigurd
Sigurd is a legendary hero of Norse mythology, as well as the central character in the Völsunga saga. The earliest extant representations for his legend come in pictorial form from seven runestones in Sweden and most notably the Ramsund carving Sigurd (Old Norse: Sigurðr) is a legendary hero of...
– the hero of the Nibelungenlied
Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....
– killed a dragon
Dragon
A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern...
living in a cave in the mountain, then bathed in its blood to become invulnerable. Hence, the mountain is named the "Dragon's Rock" -- Drachenfels.
A mountain railway
Mountain railway
A mountain railway is a railway that ascends and descends a mountain slope that has a steep grade. Such railways can use a number of different technologies to overcome the steepness of the grade...
, the Drachenfels Railway
Drachenfels Railway
The Drachenfels Railway or Drachenfelsbahn is a rack railway line in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany. The line runs from Königswinter to the summit of the Drachenfels mountain at an altitude of ....
, connects Königswinter
Königswinter
Königswinter is a town and summer resort in the Rhein-Sieg district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is situated on the right bank of the Rhine, opposite to Bonn, at the foot of the Siebengebirge.- Main sights :...
with the summit of the Drachenfels.
About a third of the way up is the Nibelungenhalle, built in 1913, a gallery of paintings by the symbolist painter Hermann Hendrich
Hermann Hendrich
Hermann Hendrich was a German painter.-Biography:...
depicting scenes from Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's operas.
External links
- Official page (in GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
) - Information around the Drachenfels (in GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
) - Apiary Honighäuschen at the Drachenfels (in EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
)