Coblenz

Koblenz stands where the Moselle joins the Rhine, a meeting of rivers reflected in its Roman name, Confluentes. A Roman military post guarded the crossing, and the Franks later made the settlement a royal seat. In 1018 Emperor Henry II granted it to the archbishop of Trier. The archbishops strengthened the city walls and the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein across the Rhine, and from the seventeenth century made the area their principal residence.

The city's position brought it into the wars of the Rhine. As revolution spread through France, Koblenz became a gathering place for royalist émigrés, including the brothers of Louis XVI. The French occupation of the left bank ended the old ecclesiastical principality; after Napoleon's defeat Koblenz passed to Prussia. The confluence remained a centre of government and a strategic crossing between the river valleys.