Kaub
Stand on the bank at Kaub and the Rhine does something you don't expect: it narrows just enough that a small hexagonal castle sitting on a bare rock in the middle of the current looks almost within arm's reach. That is Pfalzgrafenstein, built in 1326 as a toll station, and it is still there, still ringed by water, still slightly improbable.
Above the town, 110 metres up, Gutenfels Castle has watched over the same bend since 1220 — and since 2022 you can sleep inside it. Between the two, Kaub itself is a compact riverside town of medieval walls, a 12th-century church on a market square, and a museum dedicated to the night a Prussian general changed the course of a war.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to mention the same moment: catching the first ferry of the morning across to Pfalzgrafenstein before the tour groups arrive, the river still flat and grey. They also mention the Blücher Museum on a quiet Tuesday — small rooms, serious artefacts, almost no one else inside.
Deals in Kaub
Book directly at the providerHow Kaub came to be
Kaub appears in the historical record as early as 983 — a small place called 'cuba villula' in the Veronese Donation. Control passed through the lords of Falkenstein, then the Counts of Katzenelnbogen, before the town came under the Rhenish Electorate in 1277. Ludwig the Bavarian granted Kaub its town charter in 1324 and two years later ordered the construction of the toll castle on the rock mid-river.
For centuries the town's business was the river trade it taxed and watched. Its moment of wider history came on New Year's Night 1813–1814, when Prussian General Blücher crossed the Rhine here with 60,000 soldiers and 20,000 horses, a crossing commemorated ever since in the building on the market square that has housed the Blücher Museum since 1913.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
Summers are warm and walkable — July averages around 24°C — and the light on the river in the long evenings is worth the crowds. Spring arrives gently from March onward; winters are cold (January barely clears 3°C) but the town is quiet and the castles look austere in low light.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.