The Ardennes-Eifel is one of Europe's great ancient highlands, an unbroken plateau of forests, volcanic craters, and deep river gorges stretching from the Rhine to the Meuse. The Carolingians divided it into the Eifelgau and Ardennengau, their favored hunting ground and the symbolic heartland of their dynasty. Through the Middle Ages, rival archbishoprics, dukedoms, and abbeys competed for its fractured landscapes, leaving behind an extraordinary density of castles and monasteries. Today it remains a thinly populated borderland, straddling the German–Romance language boundary, where traveler and landscape share a sense of ancient, unhurried depth
