Koblenz Walls & Wartime: Defences & Second World War History

Photo: Holger Weinandt / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Stand here at what remains of Koblenz's medieval fortifications, and you're looking at stones that tell a two-thousand-year story of defense. The Romans got here first: around 9 BC, under Emperor Augustus, they built a small fort right where the Moselle meets the Rhine, to guard the road between Mainz and Cologne. They…

Koblenz im Buga-Jahr 2011 - Deutsches Eck 01 | 🔗 wikipedia.org

Photo: Holger Weinandt / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 deWikipedia EN (Deutsches Eck)

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You're standing on the very tip of land where the Moselle pours into the Rhine. This point isn't entirely natural: in the 1890s the old Moselle harbour was filled in to create a stage for a monument to Wilhelm I, the first German emperor. His grandson Wilhelm II unveiled it in 1897. The rider alone is fourteen metres t…

Photo: Thomas Hummel / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The rivers that made Koblenz a prize worth defending also made it a target that couldn't be ignored. Here at Fort Konstantin, begun in 1822 and completed in 1827/28 as part of the Prussian fortress ring, the permanent exhibition "Koblenz in World War II" documents what happened when modern warfare came to this ancient …