Every design for Koblenz

The Romans set up a military post here and called it Confluentes, the place where the rivers flow together, and Koblenz has carried that name, through Covelenz and Coblenz, for more than two thousand years. Every corner of the city still turns towards the water.

What people remember is the easy rhythm of a river town. A stroll along the Moselle ends at the Deutsches Eck, the point where it meets the Rhine, under the great equestrian statue of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Denkmal. Across the Rhine the Festung Ehrenbreitstein rises on its hill, a site fortified long before the Romans arrived. Back in the old town the Florinskirche and the Liebfrauenkirche, where Carolingian kings once met in synod, stand a few streets apart, and the Kurfürstliches Schloss recalls the centuries when the archbishop-electors of Trier ruled from here. The city lies in a narrow flood plain between high hills, and part of it belongs to the World Heritage landscape of the Upper Middle Rhine.

Stand at the Deutsches Eck once, with two rivers merging at your feet, and you understand why anyone would want Koblenz on a shirt.