We Stopped To Breakfast At Bonn And After Breakfast Made A
Promenade Thro' The City.
Bonn is a handsome, clean, well-built and
cheerful looking city and the houses are good and solid.
The Electoral Palace is a superb building, but is not occupied and is
falling rapidly to decay. From the terrace in the garden belonging to this
Palace, which impends over the Rhine, you have a fine view of this noble
river. This Palace was at one time made use of as a barrack by the French,
and since the secularization of the Ecclesiastical Electorates it has not
been thought worth while to embellish or even repair it. There is a Roman
antiquity in this town called the Altar of Victory, erected on the Place
St Remi, but remarkable for nothing but its antiquity; it seems to be a
common Roman altar.[23] The road from Bonn to Godesberg is three miles in
length and thro' a superb avenue of horse-chesnut trees; but before you
arrive at Godesberg, there is on the left side of the road a curious
specimen of Gothic architecture called Hochkreutz, very like Waltham
cross in appearance, but much higher and in better preservation; it was
erected by some feudal Baron to expiate a homicide. The castle of Godesberg
is situated on an eminence and commands a fine prospect; it is now a mass
of rums and the walls only remain. It derives its name of Godesberg or
Goetzenberg from the circumstance of its having been formerly the site of a
temple of Minerva built in the time of the Romans, and thence called
Goetzenberg by the Christians, Goetze in German signifying an idol.
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