Rüdesheim am Rhein is one of Germany's most visited small towns — remarkable given its modest population — due to its position at the southern end of the Rheingau wine region and its dramatic Rhine Valley setting. It has been a stop for travellers since at least the early 19th century, when English and German Romantic writers made the Rhine valley fashionable.
The narrow Drosselgasse pedestrian lane is the tourist epicentre: wine taverns and restaurants packed together, inevitably crowded in summer. Beyond this, the town has real substance. The Klunkhardshof, the Adlerturm fortified tower, and the Brömserburg — a thousand-year-old castle now housing the Rheingau Wine Museum — are all worth seeing. The Church of St. Jakobus on the market square, rebuilt after wartime destruction, retains medieval tombstones of the town's old nobility.
The Niederwald Monument above the town, reachable by gondola, gives spectacular views over the narrow Rhine valley, the Nahe estuary, the nature park Rhein-Taunus, and the vine-covered Rheingau slopes. Up the hill, the Abbey of St. Hildegard in Eibingen — founded by Hildegard of Bingen in the 12th century — is worth the short detour for the church mosaics and the abbey shop's wine. The Rüdesheimer Riesling grown here is world-famous.