We Stopped To Breakfast At Bonn And After Breakfast Made A
Promenade Thro' The City.
Bonn is a handsome, clean, well-built and
cheerful looking city and the houses are good and solid.
The Electoral Palace is a superb building, but is not occupied and is
falling rapidly to decay. From the terrace in the garden belonging to this
Palace, which impends over the Rhine, you have a fine view of this noble
river. This Palace was at one time made use of as a barrack by the French,
and since the secularization of the Ecclesiastical Electorates it has not
been thought worth while to embellish or even repair it. There is a Roman
antiquity in this town called the Altar of Victory, erected on the Place
St Remi, but remarkable for nothing but its antiquity; it seems to be a
common Roman altar.[23] The road from Bonn to Godesberg is three miles in
length and thro' a superb avenue of horse-chesnut trees; but before you
arrive at Godesberg, there is on the left side of the road a curious
specimen of Gothic architecture called Hochkreutz, very like Waltham
cross in appearance, but much higher and in better preservation; it was
erected by some feudal Baron to expiate a homicide. The castle of Godesberg
is situated on an eminence and commands a fine prospect; it is now a mass
of rums and the walls only remain. It derives its name of Godesberg or
Goetzenberg from the circumstance of its having been formerly the site of a
temple of Minerva built in the time of the Romans, and thence called
Goetzenberg by the Christians, Goetze in German signifying an idol.
On the plain at the foot of the hill of Godesberg and at the distance of an
eighth of a mile from the river, a shelving cornfield intervening, stand
three large hotels and a ridotto, all striking edifices. To the south of
these is situated a large wood. These hotels are always full of company in
the summer and autumn: they come here to drink the mineral waters, a
species of Seltzer, the spring of which is about a quarter of a mile
distant from the hotels. The hotel at which we put up bears the name of
Die schoene Aussicht (la Belle Vue) and well does it deserve the name; for
it commands a fine view of the reaches of the river, north and south.
Directly on the opposite bank, abruptly rising, is the superb and
magnificent chain of mountains called the Sieben Gebirge or Seven
Mountains. On the summit of these mountains tower the remains of Gothic
castles or keeps, still majestic, tho' in ruins, and frowning on the plains
below; they bring to one's recollection the legends and chronicles of the
Middle Ages. They bear terrible awe-inspiring names such as Drachenfels,
Loewenberg; the highest of them is called Drachenfels or the Rock of Dragons
and on it stood the Burg or Chateau of a Feudal Count or Raubgraf, who
was the terror of the surrounding country, and has given rise to a very
interesting romance called The Knights of the Seven Mountains.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 35 of 291
Words from 17641 to 18167
of 151859
