Hotel Petersberg

Hotel Petersberg is a hotel and official guest house of the Federal Republic of Germany, termed the "Bundesgästehaus" (the official title being Gästehaus der Verfassungsorgane der Bundesrepublik Deutschland). It is located on the Petersberg, a prominent mountain of the Siebengebirge near Bonn, Germany. With a height of, it overlooks the cities of Königswinter, on the right bank of the Rhine river, and Bonn on the opposite side.HistoryIn 1834 the area was sold to the merchant Joseph Ludwig Mertens. His wife Sibylle Mertens-Schaafhausen built a summer residence on the Petersberg, and became known as the Rheingräfin ("countess of the Rhine").At the end of the 19th century the Nelles brothers from Cologne had bought the area and started to add buildings. In 1892 they opened up the eponymous hotel that could easily be reached via the newly built Petersbergbahn, a rack railway that continued in intermittent operation until 1958. In 1912 Ferdinand Mülhens' rack and pinion railway, owner of the 4711 company, bought the property. Under the direction of the architect Heinrich Müller-Erkelenz the hotel was converted during the next two years into a spa. Terraces to overlook the Rhine and a new access route were built in the 1930s.