What to See in Remagen - Top Sights and Attractions

Museum in towers of World War I bridge. The Ludendorff Bridge was in early March 1945 a critical remaining bridge across the river Rhine in Germany when it was captured during the Battle of Remagen by United States Army forces during the closing weeks of the European part of World War II. Built in World War I to help deliver reinforcements and supplies to the German troops on the Western Front, it connected Remagen on the west bank and the village of Erpel on the eastern side between two hills flanking the river.

Midway through Operation Lumberjack, on 7 March 1945, the troops of the 1st U.S. Army approached Remagen and were surprised to find that the bridge was still standing. Its capture, two weeks before Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's meticulously planned Operation Plunder, enabled the U.S. Army to establish a bridgehead on the eastern side of the Rhine. After the U.S. forces captured the bridge, German forces tried to destroy it many times.

It finally collapsed on 17 March 1945, 10 days after it was captured; 28 Army engineers were killed in the collapse while a further 63 were injured. Of those who died, 18 were actually missing, but presumably had drowned in the swift current of the Rhine River. While it stood, the bridge and newly established pontoon bridges enabled the U.S. Army to establish a bridgehead of six divisions, about 125,000 troops, with accompanying tanks, artillery pieces, and trucks, across the Rhine. Capturing the bridge shortened the war, and V-E Day came on May 8. After the war, the bridge was not rebuilt; the towers on the west bank were converted into a museum and the towers on the east bank are a performing-arts space.^[1]

Catholic church in Remagen, Germany. The Apollinariskirche is a church on the site of a Roman temple on the Apollinarisberg, a hill above the German town of Remagen. That hill was known as the Martinsberg in the 5th and 6th centuries, presumably after a Frankish chapel there dedicated to Saint Martin, patron of the Franks. In the 9th century this chapel was replaced by a Romanesque church.

In 1110 the Benedictines of the Michaelsberg Abbey, on the initiative of the people of Remagen, set up a provost there. The relics of Saint Apollinaris of Ravenna probably arrived on the mountain at the end of the 14th century, since a pilgrimage to the Apollinarisberg is recorded in 1384. The sarcophagus is the main relic in the 14th century crypt of the church.

A new Neo-Gothic church was built on the site from 1837 to 1852.^[2]