Germany\'s Upper Middle Rhine Valley

By Patrick Totty Posted on Culinary

One of the most intriguing appellations UNESCO applies to its World Heritage Sites is “cultural landscapes.” These are regions where a long history of association between humans and the land is evident in either the artifacts that dot the landscape or the continuation of practices, usually agricultural, that show a balanced relationship between the inhabitants and nature.Examples of previously designated cultural landscapes include Portugal’s Alto Douro Wine Region, the UK’s Blaenavon Industrial Landscape and the Philippines’ Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras.The latest UNESCO cultural landscape, named only last June, is Germany’s Upper Middle Rhine Valley. The 40-mile stretch of hill-girt river between Bingen in the south and Koblenz in the north may well be the most complex, history-filled cultural landscape UNESCO has ever designated:

· The Rhine has always been Europe’s great river: from Roman times when it marked the eastern limit beyond which Rome would not push, fearful as it was of the military might of the German tribes further on; to the rise of barge and boat traffic in the Middle Ages that led to the creation of wealthy cities and principalities along its banks; to the 21st century, in which tens of millions of tons of goods move up and downriver each year to and from the port at Rotterdam, earth’s biggest.
· The river has been the epicenter of Germany’s wine industry, an enterprise that has lined the Rhine with mile after mile of the tell-tale terraces of viniculture. Some of Germany’s greatest riesling wines come from the Rheingau region on the southern edge of this cultural landscape and from the Mittelrhein region along its northern shores. Rieslings, which have an unfortunate and undeserved reputation in the U.S. as overly fruity, sweet wines, are considered by some aficionados to be the world’s greatest white wines. German rieslings at their best seem to combine the essence of flowers and fruit in a most delicate way, sugar and acidity finely balanced, as though the vintners had bottled some fine spring days.

· The region’s thriving economy has always invited fortification, from the ancient Roman forts along the limes (liquid boundaries) to the great towers and castles of the Middle Ages. The stretch of Rhine from Bingen to Koblenz boasts 18 castles, some in moldering ruin and others in splendid repair. (Some, like Schonburg, are also hotels.) Boat excursion providers along the river refer to the “high castles strung like pearls on the ledges.”· The physical beauty of the area includes the steep hillsides that vault up from the river, the still dense forests at their tops, and the Rhine’s sinuous loops and sways just north of Boppard and Bingen. Near the southern end of the cultural landscape is the Lorelei, a 435-foot-high slate rock that vaults out of the river and marks one of its narrowest, hardest-to-navigate sections (only 72 feet wide at this point). Historically, this part of the river has always been treacherous, so it’s no surprise that the rock that marks it should have taken on the name of a siren who, it is said, drew sailors’ eyes up to the rock at crucial times with her enchanting song. Distracted, they of course crashed their boats.

· The towns along here are the heart of the region’s appeal. They’re small, hemmed in by the hillsides behind and beside them, and the river in front of them. Lacking the space to have grown into urban behemoths like their fellow Rhine cities of Frankfurt to the south and Dusseldorf to the north, they have not suffered the developer’s ax and have retained splendid ensembles of architecture ranging from early Medieval to 18th century. Bell towers and the pitched roofs of gasthauses and townsmen’s quarters are the skylines here. Towns like Boppard can trace their origins to the Romans. The cathedral at Oberwessel, a wine center, boasts the largest organ on the Middle Rhine, while Bacharach has one of the best collections of medieval architecture in Germany.The appeal of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley crosses so many categories that we think it may become the most popular cultural landscape yet. Its combination of history, physical beauty, architecture, water traffic, notable vinicultural areas and closeness to the heart of Europe make it a place that can appeal to virtually everybody.