Traben-Trarbach is 24km downstream from Bernkastel-Kues, though only a fraction of that distance away as the crow flies. Traben, on the northern bank, was once a prime strategic site, as the two ruined fortesses above the town testify. Schloss Grevenburg , now reduced to a couple of walls, was blown up in 1697 in accordance with the terms of a recently signed peace treaty. In 1734 Mont Royal , built just 44 years previously by Louis XIV, suffered similar treatment, leaving the citizens free to get on with more peaceful pursuits like building half-timbered houses. Most of these are actually in Trarbach on the opposite bank, where they rub shoulders with more substantial upper-middle-class villas from the nineteenth century. Also on the Trarbach side of the connecting bridge is the Brückentor , a monumental gateway designed by the Jugendstil architect Bruno Möhring, who created several other buildings in town in the same style, including the Haus Huesgen , Am Bahnhof 20, and the Haus Breucker , An der Mosel 7, both on the river bank in Traben.