“Highup on the ancient tower stands the noble hero’s ghost”. Inspired by the sight of the ruins of Lahneck Castle, Johan Wolfgang von Goethe penned the poem Geistesgruß (Greeting from a ghost), that marked the literary beginning of Rhine Romanticism.

The castle was constructed between 1240 and 1245 by Archbishop Siegfried III to provide protection for the Mainz estates. Lahnstein and its silver mine had become an exclave of the archbishopric of Mainz in the year 1220. Until sometime in the 16th century, the castle in the hills above the mouth of the River Lahn was the seat of a Mainz bailiff. Following the feud between the bishops of Mainz in the late 15th century, the castle was extended and strengthened.

The chapel, built in 1245, also contains glass and panel paintings from this period. The chapel’s choir juts well out over the original ring wall of the castle as if in a gesture symbolising the self-importance and prestige that the archbishops of Mainz gave themselves.

The symmetrical layout of the original inner castle typical of the Staufer period is still clearly recognisable despite later alterations to the courtyard. The pentagonal keep with its massive curtain wall and round corner towers dates back to this period. Around 1436, a second ring wall with several circular towers was built around the inner ditch.

The English railway entrepreneur Edward Moriarty began remodelling of the castle in English neo-Gothic style in 1852, and this was continued by Gustav Göde in the 1860s. The battlemented parapets and flat roofs added at that time were removed between 1936 and 1938 in order to restore something of the original medieval appearance of the castle.

Today, the castle grounds and some of the richly furnished historical rooms are open to visitors.