Aging Memories

The small middle-Rhine town of Sankt Goar in Germany is a picture perfect collection of interesting old buildings and cobbled streets. It stretches... more

by Sarah Loft

Title

Aging Memories

Artist

Sarah Loft

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

The small middle-Rhine town of Sankt Goar in Germany is a picture perfect collection of interesting old buildings and cobbled streets. It stretches along the Rhine and is no more than 4 or 5 blocks in width because of the mountainous terrain immediately behind it. It's a great place for a photographer. I came across this peeling paint on the door of an old house.

Per Wikipedia: Sankt Goar is a town on the west bank of the Middle Rhine in the Rhein-Hunsrick-Kreis (district) in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Sankt Goar-Oberwesel, whose seat is in the town of Oberwesel.
Sankt Goar is well known for its central location in the Rhine Gorge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since July 2002. Above the town stand the ruins of Burg Rheinfels, one of the castles for which the Middle Rhine is famous, and across the river lies the sister town of Sankt Goarshausen with its own castles, Katz and Maus ("Cat" and "Mouse". The famous Lorelei rock is close-by, slightly upstream on the opposite bank.
The area around what is now the town of Sankt Goar was already settled in Roman times. The name in the Early Middle Ages was Wochara, after a short brook emptying into the Rhine here.
The name by which the town goes today is from Goar of Aquitaine, who came to live on the site where the town now stands during Frankish, Merovingian King Childebert I's reign (511-538). Goar came as a young clergyman (actually, a monk) from Aquitaine in the southwest of France and at first lived as a hermit in a cave on the Rhine. With leave from the Bishop of Trier, he worked as a missionary to the local people. He was well known for his great hospitality, particularly towards the Rhine boatmen. Later, he built on the site where the town now stands a hospice and a chapel. Many legends gathered about him. After his death, about 575, Goar's grave became a pilgrimage site and the place was named after him.

Featured in the Pleasing the Eye group, July 2015.

Uploaded

July 25th, 2015