Marienfels Castle, built in 1859, owes its name to the legend of the “Devil on the Castle Hill”: according to this, Lucifer lived in a cave on the hill on which it stands. As the sugar producer Eduard Frings acquired the 100,000-square metre surrounding hillside area near Remagen and commissioned the military engineer Karl Schnitzler with the construction of a representative summer seat, the activity drove the devil away. Frings had a larger than life Madonna figure built - as an antidote against the spook and protection against the devil coming back. The Castle is a magnificent testimonial of Prussian Rhine romanticism, to which the architect Schnitzer even added a medieval- looking bergfried. With the tower, Karl Schnitzler - who as fortress architect was just as significant for the construction of the Prussian fortress Ehrenbreitstein - wanted to simulate a long history for the castle, entirely in the sense of romanticism.
The castle is still a romantic place to celebrate weddings today.