Johannisberg

The Johannisberg rises in the west of Bad Nauheim, a western outpost of the Taunus hills thrusting into the Wetterau plain. Its slopes carry traces of human use stretching back to the Stone Age, when Michelsberger and Corded Ware pottery was left by early farmers. Later Iron Age settlers built a hilltop settlement protected by a two-metre-high rampart, while a Roman signal tower of the 2nd century relayed messages along the Limes to Friedberg castle. The medieval core is marked by an octagonal tower built about 1300 as part of a monastery church founded in 779. After the Reformation the church fell into ruin, but the standing tower was converted into an observation platform in 1866 and now houses the Wetterau public observatory. Below the summit stands a protected café restaurant once visited by Empress Elisabeth of Austria during her spa stay. Visitors reach the top along the Parkstraße and are rewarded with wide views across Bad Nauheim’s old town, the Wetterau plain and as far as the Vogelsberg. The hillside once grew wine continuously from the 15th century until the late 19th, and after restoration by the Freundeskreis Weinanbau Johannisberg new vines again climb the slope. At the foot of the hill the 1933 Soldier’s Memorial, designed by August Metzger, honours the war dead of both world wars in Weibern tuff stone.