North Tower - Schloss Drachenburg

Guest Bedroom (North Tower)
“From the balcony and oriel of the room – which, thanks to its elevated position, is the
room in the castle with the best vantage point – one has an incomparably good view of the
entire Rhine and mountain panorama.”
Drachenfels and Schloss Drachenburg near Königswinter on the Rhine, undated, c. 1904
Situated in the North Tower of Schloss Drachenburg, the present Wedding Chamber used to
be a guest bedroom. Refl ecting tastes of the late 19th century, the room was furnished in a
neo-Gothic style. A postcard dating from 1905, for example, shows a monumental four-poster
bed with rich intricate carvings, a prayer kneeler, a medieval-type chandelier and a linen
chest. A brochure published in 1904 also reports of a “splendid bedroom placed not without
reason above the Tavern Room”…
“The Bonn fi rm of J. Vershoven clearly knew how to satisfy the highest demands, namely,
by means of installing inordinately tasteful and comfortable furnishings to match the stark
Gothic style of the castle. For its part, the antique oil painting above the prayer kneeler in the
corner of the room depicted the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven and was the work
of an unknown master of the older Italian school”.
But even though the inventory catalogues of 1910 and 1930 still spoke of the “richly carved
bedroom” and listed the original items of furniture, the once romantic North Tower room
was transformed into a classroom during the time the castle housed St Michael’s Catholic
Boys Boarding School in the 1930s. And in the years after 1941, at the time of the Adolf-Hitler-
Schule, the room was used as the headmaster’s offi ce.
By the 1980s, furnished with a neo-baroque four-poster bed, commode and seats, the room
was again to fulfi l its original purpose as a bedroom or, to be more precise, as the “representative”
chamber and boudoir of Erina von Sachsen, the wife of Paul Spinat. Even today,
you can still see Spinat’s initials painted on the white-and-gold-painted door and the ceiling
artwork of The Education of Cupid by Venus and Mercury … with Paul portrayed as Mercury
and Erina as Venus!
The room now serves as a romantic Wedding Chamber high above the River Rhine and thus
picks up on the symbolism of Venus the goddess of love and the young Cupid (Amor).
For more information about civil wedding ceremonies at Schloss Drachenburg, please call
+49 2223 90197-75.