Bastei is a row of jagged sandstone pinnacles rising 194 metres straight up from the Elbe River in eastern Germany. Near their tops the towers are stitched together by a slender stone bridge built in 1851. The rock began as sea-floor sand, laid down more than 100 million years ago when a shallow Cretaceous sea covered Saxony; rivers and rain later cut the soft stone into free-standing spires and deep ravines. The bridge is 76.5 metres long, its seven arches spanning a gorge 40 metres deep, and it replaced an earlier wooden crossing from 1824. Walkers still cross from one pinnacle to the next, out over the void. These are the signature rocks of Saxon Switzerland National Park, and by the end of the nineteenth century the Bastei had become the region's most famous sight.
From the terraces the whole valley opens at once: the Elbe curling far below, the flat-topped Lilienstein rising across the water, and dark forest running to the horizon. At dawn the towers catch a soft pink light and mist settles into the ravines, so the pinnacles seem to float free of the ground. Iron walkways lead off the bridge into Felsenburg Neurathen, whose chambers and passages are cut straight into the pillars. From there a steep path drops to the spa village of Rathen on the riverbank, reached across the Elbe by ferry. These same views drew the Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich here two centuries ago along the Malerweg, the old Painters' Way. The Bastei remains one of Germany's busiest natural landmarks — the bridge free to cross, but quietest at first light and on autumn evenings.