Looking Down River

This is from the Burg Rheinfels looking down the Rhine River. This Castle is the largest on the Rhine River, but is a ruin.

The picturesque places with their towers, turrets, dungeons and torture chambers were once the homes of robber barons whose sole source of revenue was the heavy tolls exacted from ships and barges floating down the Rhine. Chains were stretched across the river and cannons were trained on ships and stubborn captains who sought to run the gauntlet.

Violent conflicts marked the relationship between enterprising princes, each knight vying to extort ever more marks than the next in order to build bigger and stronger castles.