Bensberg Palace (Schloss Bensberg) is a former hunting lodge of the Counts Palatine of the Rhine (the House of Wittelsbach). The palace was commissioned by Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine for his wife Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici. Anna Maria Luisa enjoyed the site's elevated scenery and views onto the River Rhine, Rhine Valley and Cologne Bight. The building was designed by Italian Baroque architect Matteo Alberti and completed in 1711.
Today Bensberg Palace is a hotel.
References:Ehrenbreitstein Fortress was built as the backbone of the regional fortification system, Festung Koblenz, by Prussia between 1817 and 1832 and guarded the middle Rhine region, an area that had been invaded by French troops repeatedly before. The fortress was never attacked.
Early fortifications at the site can be dated back to about 1000 BC. At about AD 1000 Ehrenbert erected a castle. The Archbishops of Trier expanded it with a supporting castle Burg Helferstein and guarded the Holy Tunic in it from 1657 to 1794. Successive Archbishops used the castle's strategic importance to barter between contending powers; thus in 1672 at the outset of war between France and Germany the Archbishop refused requests both from the envoys of Louis XIV and from Brandenburg's Ambassador, Christoph Caspar von Blumenthal, to permit the passage of troops across the Rhine.