Cochem

Cochem was settled in Celtic and Roman times and first recorded in 866 as Villa cuchema. Its castle is first mentioned in 1130, and in 1151 King Konrad III occupied it and declared it an imperial castle. In 1294 King Adolf of Nassau pledged the town to the archbishops of Trier, and it stayed in the Electorate of Trier until 1794. Cochem received town rights in 1332, and the walls built soon afterwards still stand. Plague struck in 1423–25, and in 1623 Elector Lothar von Metternich founded the Capuchin monastery above the town. Cochem was besieged in the Thirty Years' War but not taken.

The great disaster came in 1689, in the Nine Years' War, when Louis XIV's troops burnt the Winneburg, took the town and destroyed its castle; rebuilding was slow, and the town hall was finished only in 1739. French rule followed from 1794 and Prussian from 1815. In the 1860s a Berlin businessman, Louis Ravené, bought the castle ruin and rebuilt it in Gothic Revival style. The first bridge across the Moselle opened in 1927, and in 1932 the fishing villages of Cond and Sehl joined the town.

Much of the old town was destroyed in the Second World War, and the operations staff of Zeisig, an underground subcamp of the Natzweiler concentration camp between Bruttig and Treis where prisoners were forced to work for Bosch, were based here. After 1946 Cochem became part of Rhineland-Palatinate, and from 1964 to 1988 the Bundesbank kept a secret emergency currency reserve under Cond.

Cochem was one of the first places on the Moselle to attract visitors: the first modern tourists came early in the 19th century, and in the 1930s it became the river's first tourist centre. Its image — half-timbered houses below a turreted castle, steep vineyards behind — draws visitors through the season, and river tours leave its promenade at frequent intervals. The town is the seat of the district and, since 2009, of the collective municipality of Cochem.

The calendar follows the wine year and the church. The season opens with an Easter market, the town and wine festival fills the last weekend of August, Sehl holds its own festival two weeks later, and Advent ends the year with a Christmas market. The town's coat of arms carries the red cross of Trier and the keys of Saint Peter, a reminder of five centuries under the archbishops.

Cochem is Catholic in tradition, with the Capuchin monastery and its Baroque-decorated church and the parish church of St. Remaclus, designed by Emil Steffann as a counterpoint to the castle across the river. Cochem is twinned with Avallon in Burgundy, Malmedy in Belgium and Moritzburg in Saxony; outside the season, local life is that of a small district town.

Just under 5,000 people live in Cochem, which makes it the smallest district town in Germany and the largest place in the Cochem-Zell district. The old town and Sehl lie on the left bank of the Moselle and Cond on the right, while Brauheck, about 2 km from the centre on the Eifel heights, has the commercial area, an air force barracks and newer housing.

Cochem is an important centre for tourism in the Moselle wine region, and wine production still plays a significant part, though the economic weight of both has waned over recent decades. Small family wineries sell from cellars and courtyards in the lanes, and the district offices, schools and a hospital provide much of the year-round work.

The day follows the visitors in season — boats arriving at the promenade, coaches and trains bringing day-trippers — and the town grows quiet after about six in the evening, when most of them leave. In winter and spring it sometimes floods the riverside; the last major floods were in 1993, 1995 and 2003.

Cochem eats and drinks like the rest of the Moselle wine country, at tables in wine taverns and family wineries many of which also serve food. Tastings are offered almost everywhere in and around the town, and local wine and liqueurs are sold in its shops.

The wines are the Moselle's own. The region is mainly famous for Riesling, with Elbling and Müller-Thurgau also grown, and its northerly position tends to give light, crisp, low-alcohol wines with high acidity and flowery aromas, often from vineyards on slate soils. The slopes are famously steep — at Bremm, a short way upriver, the Calmont is the steepest recorded vineyard in the world, at a 65-degree incline — and in recent years winemakers have worked to win acceptance for fully dry, or trocken, Rieslings.

Cochem's own speciality is mustard, ground at a historic mill established around 1810 and sold in many flavours. The riverside restaurants on the promenade serve their meals with the river and its boats for a view.