Wonderful flights under the partly cloudy sky of Unkel, several colorful paragliders adorned the sky near Bonn on the Rhine River.

Nearby is the “Siebengebirge” with its famous Drachenfels (“Dragon’s Rock”) is a mountain of 321m high in the Siebengebirge mountain range near Bonn, Germany. The ruined castle on the top of the mountain has the same name. A more recent construction castle, restored in 2003 and also on the right bank of the Rhine, is called Drachenburg Palace.

A German legend tells that Siegfried – the hero of the Song of the Nibelungen and the Icelandic Völsunga Saga – slayed the dragon Fafnir here and bathed in its blood to become invulnerable. According to the sagas, that happens in a place called Brez de Gnita. The Gnita Heath is a mythical place, but possibly it refers to one of those two places. Therefore, the mountains are called Drachenfels (“Rock of the Dragon”). The history alone is enough of a reason to visit.

The term Nibelung is a personal or clan name with several competing and contradictory uses in Germanic heroic legend. It has an unclear etymology, but is often connected to the root nebel, meaning mist. The term in its various meanings gives its name to the Middle High German heroic epic the Nibelungenlied.

More down to earth, the castle is located in the seven hills of Siebengebirge between Königswinter and Bad Honnef. Drachenfels is a hill within the Siebengebirge uplands and looks down at the Rhine from a height of 1,053 feet (321 meters). The rock of the mountain was formed by an ancient volcano and was used as a trachyte quarry in Roman times. The stone from the site was used to build the iconic Cologne Cathedral.

The fortress’ history began as a defense from attackers to the south. Arnold I, the Cologne archbishop, ordered its construction from 1138 to 1167. But the fortress’ development was undone in 1634 when an archbishop pulled it down during the Thirty Years War. Erosion continued man’s work and today there is little but rubble left of the earlier structure atop the hill.

It is now owned by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and is open to the public. Its elaborate rooms and regal grounds offer stunning views of the river and valley below and on a clear day, castle visitors can see all the way to the towers of Cologne’s Cathedral.

The myth of the Nibelungs says that, somewhere in the Rhine River, the treasure of the Nibelungs is still hidden.