Excursion to Bonn and the Siebengebirge

Bonn spent forty years as the capital of West Germany and two and a half centuries before that as an electoral residence, and it has the composure of both. Beethoven was born here. Half an hour upstream the Rhine narrows between the wooded volcanic cones of the Siebengebirge, the hills that gave German Romanticism its dragons. This private day excursion runs from Cologne or Duesseldorf and puts the two together.

Bonn

The morning is spent on foot in a genuinely walkable old town: the market square and its rococo town hall, the Bonn Minster with its Romanesque towers, and the Beethoven House on the Bonngasse where the composer was born in 1770 and which is now a museum of his manuscripts and instruments. A short distance out, the pink baroque Poppelsdorf Palace closes the avenue that runs from the university, with its botanical garden behind. The guide can lean towards music, towards the postwar republic, or towards the electors, depending on who is in the car. Guests who care about the Bonn republic can be shown the former government quarter along the river, where the modest buildings from which the Federal Republic was run for four decades still stand; guests who came for Beethoven will happily spend the entire morning within three streets of his front door.

The Siebengebirge

In the afternoon the route crosses to the right bank and climbs into the Siebengebirge, Germany’s oldest nature reserve and the setting for the legend in which Siegfried killed the dragon and bathed in its blood. The Drachenfels is the destination: a ruined twelfth-century castle on a rock above the river, reached by a rack railway or on foot, with the Rhine valley opening below and the nineteenth-century Schloss Drachenburg perched on the slope beneath it. On a clear day the view runs all the way back to Cologne.

Practical shape

• Full day, private, starting from Cologne or Duesseldorf as your clients prefer
• Private vehicle with driver and a licensed English-speaking guide throughout
• A moderate amount of walking, with the rack railway available for the ascent
• Admissions, the railway and lunch quoted separately from the ground arrangements
• Lunch usually taken in Bonn or in a wine village on the river

Season and combinations

The excursion is at its best from April to October, when the hills are green and the view holds; the vineyards on the slopes colour beautifully in October. It suits music-minded clients, walkers who want scenery without effort, and families who will take a castle and a legend over a museum. Combine it with the two-hour private tour of Cologne on the preceding day, or with the Ruhr industrial heritage excursion for a complete contrast. Related products are gathered in our Bonn portfolio and the regional base on the Cologne destination page.