The Ravenna Gorge

Some of the Black Forest cuckoo clicks for sale in Hofgut Sternen in the Ravennaschluct.

Waterfalls, cuckoo clocks, and Marie Antoinette in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) of southern Germany

The Hofgut Sternen hotel and restaurant in the Ravenna Gorge.

The Ravenna Gorge was nicknamed the Höllental ("Hell's Gorge") by retreating French troops in 1796—a bit unfairly, since this narrow Black Forest valley is quite beautiful, a deeply wooded cleft spanned by a the impressively tall stone viaduct of Germany's steepest railway bridge.

The French simply had a rough time marching through this wilderness. The irony is, their deposed queen had passed though herself 26 years earlier...

In the heart of the Ravennaschluct is a small tourist-stop collection of buildings now known as the Hofgut Sternen (Hofgut-sternen.de; double rooms from €99 online, » book): Decently-priced hotel, pretty good restaurant, interesting glass-blowing workshop, and that Black Forest staple, a cuckoo clock shop.

Touristy, yes, but in a low-key way, and its a terribly convenient stop for lunch. (Besides, as long as you're going to shop for a clock, might as well go for quality.)

A waterfall hike in the Ravenna gorge.

It may be a Best Western now, but this hostelry was been around since the Middle Ages as a post house where traders could hire extra horses to pull their wares up to the towns above.

In the middle of the 18th century, the main road from Vienna to Paris was routed though this valley. This became significant a few years later in 1770 when Marie Antoinette—on her way to Paris to meet her future husband, Louis XVI—showed up unexpectedly (along with 21 state coaches, 36 carriages, and 450 horses) and asked if the hotel could provide lunch for her retinue. Goethe and Anthony Trollope have also been guests.

The Ravenna Gorge offers a few nice little hikes, the best being under the railroad bridge and up the gorge along a stream to a small waterfall.

Also take a minute to pop down the road to the 12th century Chapel of St. Oswald, where you can peer into a low window and see the piles of bones in the crypt. Burial space was at a premium for the trio of surrounding mountain villages the church served, so any deceased were dug up after a few dozen years in the ground to make room for new burials, and the bones tossed in here.

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