Emperor Frederick! Barbarossa built a castle in Kaiserslautern 0 02,000 inhabitants) in the 12th century. The old Roman city of Trier (99,000 inhabitants) is 2,000 years old; its buildings dating from Roman times appear on the UNESCO World Heritage List, as do the cathedrals in Speyer, Worms and Mainz, the abbey church Maria Laach in the Eifel, Eltz Castle, the town of Oberwesel on the Rhine, St. Catherine’s Church in Oppenheim, the Church of St. Paulinus in Trier and the Ehrenbreit-stein Fortress near Koblenz.

Artists of yesterday and today.

The unusual light above the lovely hilly countryside o^ the Palatinate was captured by the Impressionist painter Max Slevogt (1868-1932). Several of his works grace the Federal Chancellery in Bonn. Prominent contemporary artists from Rhineland-Palatinate include the painters Heijo Han-gen and Karl-Otto Gotz as well as the sculptors Franz Bernhard, Erwin Wortelkamp and Michael Croissant. Every year, between 1 May and 3 October, the “Rhineland-Palatinate Summer of Culture” features a wide variety of cultural events which are held all over the state.