Kyrburg

Blown up by French troops in 1734, during the War of the Polish Succession, the Kyrburg had by then stood above Kirn for six centuries: first recorded in 1128 in a charter of Count Emich de Kirberc, held by the Wildgrafen and, after a marriage in 1409, by the Rheingrafen, and fought over repeatedly in the Thirty Years' War. A garrison house was raised among the ruins in 1764. Kirn has owned the hill since 1988, and the shattered walls now serve as an open-air stage for opera, theatre and concerts under the Hunsrück sky, with a restaurant and a whisky museum in the surviving building below. Puccini's Tosca and the overture to Verdi's Nabucco have both been heard from the ruin.