Bingen, Germany ? Nothing could be finer than to hop a river liner along the Rhine’s enchanting canyon of storied castles, church spires, lush terraced vineyards and jagged cliffs rich in history and legend.

Europe’s Ol’ Man River, all 825 miles of it from a trickling glacial stream in the Swiss Alps down to the North Sea in the Netherlands, meanders down the ages as perhaps the most beautiful, battled over and bragged about ” in song and story ” waterway in all the world.

Heroes, real and mythic, hover over the river like the majestic Gothic cathedral at Cologne, which claims the bones of the Three Wise Men.

The dazzling 35-mile stretch from Bingen down to Koblenz, famous in wine, rhyme and Wagnerian opera, has been listed as a “cultural landscape” by UNESCO.

Julius Caesar and his legions crossed the Rhine on a log bridge. Cologne, Bonn, Nierstein and Koblenz were Roman camps. Attila the Hun’s butchery hereabouts earned him the nom de guerre “the scourge of God.” The timbered houses in the cobblestone villages along these banks have witnessed the Great Plague and the Thirty Years War.

Napoleon was rowed across the river in a skiff to begin pushing his empire’s eastern boundaries toward Berlin and Moscow. The Rhineland was a bloody battleground in World War I and pounded by 1,000-bomber British and American air raids during World War II.

Hastening the end of the war in Europe, American infantrymen hurried across the Ludendorff railway bridge at Remagen, while the Germans were desperately trying to blow it up with 600-pound charges. Hitler, in a rage, relieved top Gen. Gerd von Rundstedt, master planner of the Battle of the Bulge, and ordered Otto Skorzeny’s frogmen to take down the bridge. But the water was too cold and the current was too swift.

A couple of weeks later, on March 24, 1945, Winston Churchill arrived at the Rhine to witness “Operation Plunder,” Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s long-planned massive crossing of Germany’s last natural barrier with a dozen Allied divisions.

Mythic history

The Rhine River is seen from the hills above Bacharach, Germany. The Rhine, connected by canals and tributaries to most of Europe, is famed for its wines, battle sites and mythic legends.

Here at Bingen, in the mid-Rhine, the Brothers Grimm wrote a fable about greedy Bishop Hatto who was eaten by mice in his still-standing Mauseturm ” Mouse Tower ” for killing off his starving flock during a grain shortage. English romantic poet Robert Southey memorialized the rodent pecked prelate in a ballad: “Bishop Hatto and the Rats.” A lady from Northern Ireland, sitting near us on the top deck of the Rhine steamer MS Wappen vom Mainz, proceeded to recite the entire poem.

The Rhine and its incomparable white wine seem to do that to people.

Not far away, the 400-foot high cliffs between St. Goar and Oberwesel echoed the wind with a remarkable singing sound that legend insists is the lullaby of the Lorelei. We passed that massive rock where the flaxen-haired temptress lured boat crews to destruction. German poet Heinrich Heine wrote the libretto for a Lorelei opera that Felix Mendelssohn never finished.

Richard Wagner was more persistent. He wove into his “Ring Cycle” the legend of the gold treasure buried by the Nibelung dwarfs somewhere in this deepest stretch of river.

A couple of million tourists a year climb the castled crags of Drachenfels, where Siegfried in the Ring saga slayed a dragon and bathed in its blood to make himself invincible. However, a leaf falling on his shoulder rendered him vulnerable.

Toasting the vineyards

A lady pharmacist from Essen told us the best way to drink in the scenery was to order a wine so that it arrived at the table the moment our boat was passing the vineyard of origin. She chose a Riesling from Markobrunn, and the waiter pulled the cork just as we passed that landing.

Vineyard-hopping by riverboat has become Europe’s latest tourist fad. A nearby table of university students from Tubingen, after much discussion, rejected a Mittelheim from a winery right on the banks in favor of a Johannisberg from a famed vineyard farther back in the hills. The verdict was that steamboats and the railroads along both shores made riverside wines “just a little bit smoky.”

Lunch on board the Wappem von Mainz was served on white tablecloths in a dining room with tall windows, so that you missed none of the scenery. The menu featured delicious regional specialties, most memorably a potato and mushroom soup and a litter of tiny, spicy Nurenberg sausages, washed down with a tall glass of Kolsh, Cologne’s light, refreshing beer. Desert selections included black forest cake, apple strudel and kaisershmarn ” the emperor’s madness ” a Teutonic version of crepes served in heroic Wagnerian proportions.

Passing Remagen, I was surprised and gratified to see the American flag flying from a remaining tower of the Ludendorff bridge, which also houses an excellent American military museum. I wondered if among the artifacts was the sign that so amused Dwight D. Eisenhower and riled Montgomery: “Cross the Rhine with dry feet courtesy of the U.S. 9th Armored Division.”

Conversation among our German passengers came to a reverent pause as we passed under Kennedybrucke, the bridge named for John F. Kennedy, and beheld the opera house and concert hall in Bonn, John LeCarre’s “small town in Germany,” the birthplace of Ludwig von Beethoven and the postwar German Republic.

Bridges to the past

The fabled castles along the Rhine date from different centuries: Marksburg, virtually unchanged since the 12th century; Stolzenfels, built in the 13th, and Pfalzgrafenstein, a 14th-century castle dramatically located on a rock island in midstream. Some have been restored and turned into luxury hotels.

Here and there a skyscraper looming over the river exchanges myth for the reality of modern mercantile Germany, Europe’s booming financial giant. One doesn’t have to wait for Holland to see windmills. Modern steel wind propellers rising high above the vineyards like giant corkscrews provide electric power to Rhineland farms and industries.

Downstream, the river is arched by a number of bridges in a depressing variety of architectural styles, but tiny ferries still buck the current between the small villages, where cozy small hotels offer Old World charm, home cooking and river views that Goethe and Somerset Maugham drank in from a porch chair with a cool glass of Liebfraumilch.

Besides the gorgeous scenery, the Rhine presents an arresting overview of a busy working river connected by canals and tributaries to most of Europe. Day and night barges flying the flags of many countries ply one of the world’s greatest inland navigation systems. Most seem to have as standard equipment on deck a dog and an automobile, and often a clothesline with children’s garments and some of Victoria’s secrets flapping in the breeze.

Floating along the Rhine in a glittering white steamer is the best but not the only way to go. Scenic highways skirt the river. Railroads hug both shores, some offering observation deck cars. The banks are often lined between cities with scenic parks, rowing clubs, hiking and biking trails.

For camera buffs, several cable cars sway over the river, and hot-air balloons and chartered helicopters compete on high for the tourist gold that the vertically challenged Nibelung folk bequeathed to this mist- and myth-veiled river.