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Dilsberg is located just east of Heidelberg on the Neckar River, directly across from Neckarsteinach.
There are no good words to describe it that I know, so I will hand off to a better writer, Mark Twain, who described his visit there in his writing “A Tramp Abroad”.
“For Dilsberg is a quaint place. It is most quaintly & picturesquely situated, too. Imagine the beautiful river before you; then a few rods of brilliant green sward on its opposite shore; then a sudden hill--no preparatory gently rising slopes, but a sort of instantaneous hill-- a hill two hundred & fifty or three hundred feet high, as round as a bowl, with the same taper upward that an inverted bowl has, & with about the same relation of height to diameter that distinguishes a bowl of good honest depth--a hill which is thickly clothed with green bushes--a comely, shapely hill, rising abruptly out of the dead level of the surrounding green plains, visible from a great distance down the bends of the river, & with just exactly room on the top of its head for its steepled & turreted & roof-clustered cap of architecture, which same is tightly jammed & compacted within the perfectly round hoop of the ancient village wall.
“There is no house outside the all on the whole hill, or any vestige of a former house; all the houses are inside the wall, but there isn't room for another one. It is really a finished town, & has been finished a very long time. There is no space between the wall & the first circle of buildings; no, the village wall is itself the rear wall of the first circle of buildings, & the roofs jut a little over the wall & thus furnish it with eaves. The general level of the massed roofs is gracefully broken & relieved by the dominating towers of the ruined castle & the tall spires of a couple of churches; so, from a distance Dilsberg has rather more the look of a king's crown than a cap. That lofty green eminence & its quaint coronet form quite a striking picture, you may be sure, in the flush of the evening sun….
. But the principal show, the chief pride of the children, was the ancient & empty well in the grass-grown court of the castle. Its massive stone curb stands up three or four feet above-ground, & is whole & uninjured. The children said that in the Middle Ages this well was four hundred feet deep, & furnished all the village with an abundant supply of water, in war & peace. They said that in the old day its bottom was below the level of the Neckar, hence the water-supply was inexhaustible….
“But there were some who believed it had never been a well at all, & was never deeper than it is now--eighty feet; that at that depth a subterranean passage branched from it & descended gradually to a remote place in the valley, where it opened into somebody's cellar or other hidden recess, & that the secret of this locality is now lost. Those who hold this belief say that herein lies the explanation that Dilsberg, besieged by Tilly & many a soldier before him, was never taken: after the longest & closest sieges the besiegers were astonished to perceive that the besieged were as fat & hearty as ever, & were well furnished with munitions of war--therefore it must be that the Dilsbergers had been bringing these things in through the subterranean passage all the time.”
[The entire text is available at http://www.mastertexts.com/Twain_Mar...pter00019.htm.
JS
There are no good words to describe it that I know, so I will hand off to a better writer, Mark Twain, who described his visit there in his writing “A Tramp Abroad”.
“For Dilsberg is a quaint place. It is most quaintly & picturesquely situated, too. Imagine the beautiful river before you; then a few rods of brilliant green sward on its opposite shore; then a sudden hill--no preparatory gently rising slopes, but a sort of instantaneous hill-- a hill two hundred & fifty or three hundred feet high, as round as a bowl, with the same taper upward that an inverted bowl has, & with about the same relation of height to diameter that distinguishes a bowl of good honest depth--a hill which is thickly clothed with green bushes--a comely, shapely hill, rising abruptly out of the dead level of the surrounding green plains, visible from a great distance down the bends of the river, & with just exactly room on the top of its head for its steepled & turreted & roof-clustered cap of architecture, which same is tightly jammed & compacted within the perfectly round hoop of the ancient village wall.
“There is no house outside the all on the whole hill, or any vestige of a former house; all the houses are inside the wall, but there isn't room for another one. It is really a finished town, & has been finished a very long time. There is no space between the wall & the first circle of buildings; no, the village wall is itself the rear wall of the first circle of buildings, & the roofs jut a little over the wall & thus furnish it with eaves. The general level of the massed roofs is gracefully broken & relieved by the dominating towers of the ruined castle & the tall spires of a couple of churches; so, from a distance Dilsberg has rather more the look of a king's crown than a cap. That lofty green eminence & its quaint coronet form quite a striking picture, you may be sure, in the flush of the evening sun….
. But the principal show, the chief pride of the children, was the ancient & empty well in the grass-grown court of the castle. Its massive stone curb stands up three or four feet above-ground, & is whole & uninjured. The children said that in the Middle Ages this well was four hundred feet deep, & furnished all the village with an abundant supply of water, in war & peace. They said that in the old day its bottom was below the level of the Neckar, hence the water-supply was inexhaustible….
“But there were some who believed it had never been a well at all, & was never deeper than it is now--eighty feet; that at that depth a subterranean passage branched from it & descended gradually to a remote place in the valley, where it opened into somebody's cellar or other hidden recess, & that the secret of this locality is now lost. Those who hold this belief say that herein lies the explanation that Dilsberg, besieged by Tilly & many a soldier before him, was never taken: after the longest & closest sieges the besiegers were astonished to perceive that the besieged were as fat & hearty as ever, & were well furnished with munitions of war--therefore it must be that the Dilsbergers had been bringing these things in through the subterranean passage all the time.”
[The entire text is available at http://www.mastertexts.com/Twain_Mar...pter00019.htm.
JS
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