Burgenlandschaft Mittelrhein

Castles and transport in Europe. That castles dominated or controlled roads and other transport routes, especially rivers, is a claim that has been made again and again for a long time. But as often as it has been repeated, it is rare to find any consideration of how this control would have worked in practice. Historians cite sources that prove the levying of customs duties as an important right of the castle nobility or the sovereign, just as the escort, the protection of travellers, was one of their duties. But how did the castles play a part in this?

Was it possible to block roads directly from the castle, for example by firing on them? Was it not more important that the crew stationed at the castle had quick access to the road? Did they need additional installations directly on the road or on the bank to secure access? And was a castle really built primarily to secure a transport route - rather than a settlement area, whereby the location close to the transport route was perhaps only a side effect?
The contributions in this volume approach such questions using a variety of methodological approaches and individual topics covering large parts of Central Europe. Most of them emerged from a conference that took place in Boppard in 2017, in a landscape whose castle construction was particularly strongly characterised by the customs of various lords and dynasties. The Upper Middle Rhine, the German castle landscape par excellence since the Romantic period and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002, was also the venue for an anniversary of the Wartburg Society, as "Burg und Verkehr" was its 20th annual conference. Volume 20 of the series "Forschungen zu Burgen und Schlössern".