Bad Ems is often called “the Emperor’s bathing resort”. The city enjoys its fame from the times of Emperor Wilhelm, however, the health resort can look back on a tradition which is much older than that. Bad Ems even belonged to the very little cities in Germany which have made an uninterrupted career as a bathing resort since the Middle Ages. There are no medieval bathing towers and bathing houses still maintained today, but the castle-like Baroque Kurhaus and the Baroque building “Zu den Vier Türmen” (Four Towers) are still an evidence of the flowering time of the city – long before Wilhelm von Preußen came to the river Lahn together with his royal household.
The “Emser Depesche” (the “Ems Telegram”) left the most famous traces in the health resort. The so-called Benedetti stone reminds of the happenings between King Wilhelm I., Graf Benedetti and Fürst von Bismarck, which led to the German-French War in 1870/71.

Not only the tsars, emperors and kings had a special liking for Bad Ems at the river Lahn. Also artists of all kinds stayed and worked in the health resort. The guest list ranged from Fedor Dostojewski to Nicolas Gogol up to Richard Wagner, who completed his opera “Parsifal” here. Jacques Offenbach lived and worked here for 12 years as a first violinist and performed numerous of his works for the first time in the “Kursaal”. Parts of “Orpheus aus der Unterwelt” were also created here. Adolf Reichwein and the universal artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser also visited the bathing resort, where they found inspiration and relaxation. Monuments, commemorative tablets and lots of art at the buildings of the city still testify the famous visitors of the health resort.

Millenniums before very different people were enthusiastic about the beauty of the “Three-River-Corner”: the Celts and the Romans. They left clearly visible traces, such as by the Limes, which is supposed to be entered into the list of the UNESCO World Heritage. There is a hiking trail “on the traces of the old Romans”, which starts in the community Kemmenau and leads down into the Lahn valley. The watchtowers of the former Roman limes, such as the one in Arzbach, the Celtic cairns in the forests around Bechteln and the numerous castles, fortresses and churches tell of times long past.
In Frücht it is worth visiting the Neo-Gothic grave chapel of the former Prussian Minister Freiherr von und zum Stein, who was the initiator of the abolition of serfdom. The visitors of Dausenau will get some kind of a medieval flair, which is not only due to the leaning tower over there.