Friedberg's castle stands on a basalt ridge above the Wetterau, a walled enclosure so large it is almost a town of its own, with a tall round tower, the Adolfsturm, rising above the trees. What most visitors walking through the castle gate do not know is that they are standing on a Roman fort. The legions chose this same ridge in the first century AD, and a fort with a civil settlement grew up here, linked by road to the Limes a few kilometres to the north and west.
The Romans valued the Wetterau for its fertile soil, and Friedberg's fort was one of the bases that held the region. In the Middle Ages the Hohenstaufen emperors built the castle on the old Roman site, and the town grew up beside it, an imperial city with a broad main street and a fine Gothic church, the Stadtkirche. Friedberg also has a rare Jewish ritual bath, a mikveh, built in the thirteenth century and descending some twenty-five metres into the ground, one of the most impressive in Germany.
A more recent chapter brings American visitors. In 1958 Elvis Presley was stationed in Friedberg with the US Army, at the Ray Barracks, and he lived in nearby Bad Nauheim during his service. Both towns remember him with plaques, a statue and an annual festival, and fans still come to see the places where he lived. The riding around Friedberg mixes the open, gently rolling Wetterau with the Taunus hills to the west, where roads climb into forest with plenty of bends, and the Vogelsberg to the north-east. Traffic near Frankfurt is heavy, so escape early.
Friedberg, a town of twenty-seven thousand, has fuel, shops and restaurants, and its main street, the Kaiserstraße, is lined with cafés. Bad Nauheim, three kilometres away, is a spa town with an art nouveau bathhouse complex, the Sprudelhof, one of the largest of its kind in Europe, and a pleasant park for a walk. Hessian food includes Handkäse mit Musik, a sour cheese with onions, and green sauce, Grüne Soße, made with seven herbs. From the top of the Adolfsturm, the view stretches across the Wetterau to the Vogelsberg and the Taunus.