The best traffic-free bike rides around Auel

The old bridge and the church in the background - a really nice photo motif.

The bridge with the church in the background is really a beautiful motif.

Very important and definitely worth seeing

At the spot below by the road, the very steep ascent begins on a path up to the Marienfels cliff next to the barbecue hut and the Lümmelbank (65 meters of altitude gain over 265 meters of distance). On the way, at a fork directly after a right turn, choose the right path upwards. The upper part of the ascent is secured by a (stable as of 06.06.2026) wooden railing at the precipice. Those who prefer to skip this steep ascent can take the wide path a bit further to the right along the road past the cemetery, then turn right into the forest and relatively far up, turn right again to the barbecue hut.

@ Oli: In your photo, the tower with the lamp looks totally like a cross. Brilliant!

Oberwesel was under the rule of the Archbishop of Trier for half a millennium and remained almost entirely Catholic. Thus, it has two beautiful Catholic churches, a handful of chapels, a Stations of the Cross, and the unspeakable anti-Semitic chapel for the false Saint Werner. The Protestant church only emerged around 1900 and outside the city walls. Not a beauty, but a sign of life for the second denomination. The neighboring Bacharach benefited from becoming Protestant under the Counts Palatine. Thus, it could more easily free itself from the gruesome Werner cult.

The Stations of the Cross to the Kalvarienberg begin at this chapel.

A catastrophe for property-owning Christians and Jews was the Children's Crusade of 1212 with its wild plunderings. Oberwesel was still lucky, as the hordes passed by, through the Eifel and then on to Mainz and Worms. Nevertheless, the construction of the town wall was hurried, and in 1237 Oberwesel became an imperial free city, i.e., tax-free. Five years later, the Franciscans built a magnificent monastery. Oberwesel was at the peak of its importance. But just 50 years later, the Franciscans incited hatred against the local Jews. An invented ritual murder triggered looting and murder of the Jewish population in 1287. But how did the supposedly poor-friendly Minorites come to such hatred? So that some inhabitants could get rid of their debts to Jews? The monument should also remind of this shame of Christendom, the Jews who were murdered by Nazis six hundred years later. Source: No copy, no AI, researched myself.