Festung Ehrenbreitstein

The vast Prussian fortress on a 118-metre rock cliff above the Rhine is the largest preserved fortification in Europe. Nineteenth-century gun emplacements, parade grounds, casemates, and the State Museum of Koblenz fill a complex that takes most of an afternoon to explore properly.

Get there by the 2010 cable car from the riverside — a six-minute ride across the Rhine at 110 metres above the water, with views down to the Deutsches Eck and along the gorge. The museums inside cover the Rhine wine trade, Rhineland archaeology and Prussian military history. The cafe terraces on the ramparts have the best view of Koblenz from any angle.

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A story
The French blew up the original castle in 1801 after a year-long siege. When the Prussians took the Rhineland in 1815 they spent the next twenty years building the largest fortress in Europe on the same spot — a deliberate insult to the French, who had to look at it across the river for the next century.