Qualla: Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth

Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit GFreihalter, CC BY-SA 3.0. Twelve thousand cannon shots — that is the count that came out of the siege of Kaiserswerth in the spring of 1702. Troops from Brandenburg, the Netherlands and England had laid the imperial palace under fire, and on June 15 they took it. Almost every house in the town was destroyed; the great Bergfried, the central keep, had walls four and a half meters thick and still came down. On August 9, by order of the Duke of Jülich-Berg, what was left of Frederick Barbarossa's fortress was deliberately razed and blown up. The ruin on the Rhine north of Düsseldorf is what remains. At low tide, large chunks of masonry are still visible in the gravel by the riverbank.

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Image: GFreihalter | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth: The Island the Emperor Built

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, FAL. Long before any emperor saw it, the site was a Rhine island, formed by an old arm of the river circling back on itself. Around 700 AD, the Frankish ruler Pepin of Herstal and his wife Plectrude gave the island to the Anglo-Saxon monk Suitbert, who founded a monastery on what was ...

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Image: A.Savin | FAL

Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth: The Coup of 1062

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.0 de. Henry III died in 1056, leaving a six-year-old son — Henry IV — and a regent mother, Agnes of Poitou. The princes of the Holy Roman Empire did not approve of the arrangement. In 1062, Archbishop Anno II of Cologne led a group of conspirators in seizing the young king during a vis...

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Image: CC BY-SA 2.0 de

Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth: Barbarossa's Toll, Barbarossa's Stone

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bodoklecksel, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1174, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa moved the Rhine toll from the Dutch town of Tiel to Kaiserswerth, planting the imperial revenue exactly where his power could collect it. He ordered the palace expanded into a serious fortification. The work was probably not finished by 1184,...

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Image: Bodoklecksel | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth: The Trick of the River

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit G. Erkenz, scan by Sir Gawain, Public domain. Kaiserswerth's whole defensive logic depended on being an island. In 1215, Count Adolf VI of Berg discovered the obvious counter-move. He had been trying, repeatedly and unsuccessfully, to free his friend Otto I, the captured Count of Oldenburg and Prince-Bishop of Münster, held ...

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Image: G. Erkenz, scan by Sir Gawain | Public domain

Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth: Quarry, Memorial, Sculpture Garden

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Schwickerath, CC BY-SA 3.0. After the 1702 demolition, the ruins served as a stone quarry for the townhouses of Kaiserswerth for almost two centuries. By the mid-19th century the eastern side of the complex was gone down to the foundations. A flood dam built in 1884 cut straight through the grounds and dest...

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Image: Peter Schwickerath | CC BY-SA 3.0