Every design for Wesel

Wesel stands where the Lippe gives itself up to the Rhine, and that meeting of rivers has shaped every chapter of its history. In the late Middle Ages it was a trading town of the Hanseatic League, second only to Cologne on the lower Rhine as a place where goods changed boats and hands.

What sets Wesel apart is how often it was fought over and rebuilt. Spanish, Dutch and French troops took it in turn; the Prussians turned it into a fortress town, and the French added a citadel at Büderich that later became Fort Blücher. The Zitadelle Wesel and the Berliner Tor survive from those centuries, and the town hall façade, lost in the Second World War, has been reconstructed. The bombing of 1945 destroyed almost the entire town, and the piers of the Alte Eisenbahnbrücke still stand in the river as a reminder.

Today the old glacis is parkland and the Willibrordi cathedral looks as it did in the sixteenth century again. Cross the Rhine bridge towards the citadel walls and you know you are home.