June 19, 2023 - Germany
The King's Castles
Today we were visiting the most popular tourist destination in southern Bavaria: the two King's Castles. The older Hohenschwangau Castle was King Ludwig's boyhood home and the famous Neuschwanstein Castle inspired Walt Disney. I made reservations to the two castles months in advance. You have to be at the front door at the precise day and time. Be a few minutes late, and that's it -- no tour for you.
It was a five minute drive from Fussen to the castle's parking lot. Then we hoofed it up to the Hohenschwangau Castle, which enjoying this view above Lake Alpsee and the Alps in the distance.
We were on time and got to go on the 45-minute tour. We had an English-speaking guide. Unfortunately, like Linderhof, photography is not allowed in the castle. So, unless you have a photographic memory, which I do not, you quickly forget what you have seen and heard, and it is lost forever. I greatly prefer a palace/castle/museum which allows photography and has placards with information about what you are seeing.
Hohenschwangau was nothing like the opulent Linderhof Palace, striking me as more of a comfortable, lived-in vacation home. The interior decor is from 1835. The most impressive room in the castle is the Banquet Hall (also known as the Hall of Heroes).
We had some time before our Entry Time for Neuschwanstein Castle so we checked out the Museum of the Bavarian Kings in the tourist village, located in a former grand hotel on the shore of the Alpsee. The museum documents the history of the Wittelsbachs, Bavaria's former royal family. We saw Ludwig II's royal robe and sword but for some reason I didn't take any pictures.
Then we walked a long way up a hill through the forest to see Neuschwanstein Castle. No cars were allowed but you could take a horse-drawn carriage. This option looked better and better as we made our way up the hill!
Neuschwanstein Castle served as the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle. More than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle. More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with as many as 6,000 per day in the summer.
The ruins above the family Hohenschwangau Castle were known to the crown prince Ludwig from his excursions. He first sketched one of them in his diary in 1859. When the young king came to power in 1864, the construction of a new palace in place of the two ruined castles became the first in his series of palace building projects. Neuschwanstein Castle replaced the ruins of the two Hohenschwangau Castles. Only after Ludwig's death was it renamed Neuschwanstein.
Ludwig chose to pay for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing rather than Bavarian public funds. The castle was intended to serve as a private residence for the king.
Work started in 1868, with the ruins of the medieval twin castles being completely demolished. The foundation stone for the palace was laid on 5 September 1869; in 1872, its cellar was completed, and in 1876, everything up to the first floor was done. The topping out ceremony for the Castle was in 1880, and in 1884 the King moved in to the new building.
Despite its size, Neuschwanstein did not have space for the royal court but contained only the King's private lodging and servants' rooms. The court buildings served decorative rather than residential purposes. The palace was intended to serve King Ludwig II as a kind of inhabitable theatrical setting. As a temple of friendship, it was also dedicated to the life and work of Richard Wagner, who died in 1883 without visiting the building. At the time of King Ludwig's death in 1886, the interior of the royal living space in the palace was mostly complete; however, the castle itself was far from complete. In the end, Ludwig II lived in the palace for a total of only 172 days.
Ludwig never intended to make the palace accessible to the public. That said, no more than six weeks after his death in 1886, the Prince-Regent Luitpold ordered the palace opened to paying visitors. The administrators of King Ludwig's estate used the tourist revenue to fund the remaining construction and pay off debts. From then until World War I, Neuschwanstein was a stable and lucrative source of revenue for the House of Wittelsbach, and King Ludwig's castles were probably the single largest income source earned by the Bavarian royal family in the last years prior to 1914. From the start, it was one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe.
We finish the Bataan Death March up to the Neuschwanstein Castle entrance. The castle is rectangular, and runs east-west. The entrance is on the east side.
King Ludwig's palaces including Neuschwanstein fell to the state -- Bavarian Republic --and are now managed by the Bavarian Palace Department, a division of the Bavarian finance ministry.
Due to its secluded and strategically unimportant location, the palace survived without damage both World Wars. Until 1944, it served as a depot for Nazi plunder that was taken from France.
Neuschwanstein was never really completed. Had it been completed, it would have had more than 200 interior rooms, including premises for guests and servants, as well as for service and logistics. Ultimately, no more than about 15 rooms and halls were finished.
In June 1886, the Bavarian government decided to depose the King, who was living at Neuschwanstein at the time. He was declared mentally unfit to rule Bavaria. On 11 June, a second commission headed by Bernhard von Gudden arrived at Neuschwanstein and the King was forced to leave the palace that night. Ludwig was put under the supervision of Gudden. Ludwig was transported to Berg Castle on the shores of Lake Starnberg, south of Munich. On 13 June, both Ludwig and Gudden died under mysterious circumstances in the shallow shore water of Lake Starnberg near Berg Castle. Ludwig's death was officially ruled a suicide by drowning; the official autopsy report indicated that no water was found in his lungs. Ludwig was a very strong swimmer in his youth, the water was approximately waist deep where his body was found, and he had not expressed suicidal feelings during the crisis. Gudden's body showed blows to the head and neck and signs of strangulation. Was Ludwig was murdered by his enemies? You make the call.
Neuschwanstein Castle basically sits on top of a mountain top.
Aerial View, south side. Picture taken by By Jeff Wilcox (Wikipedia)
From Rick Steves: "Imagine "Mad" King Ludwig as a boy, climbing the hills above his dad's castle, Hohenschwangau, dreaming up the ultimate fairy-tale castle. Inheriting the throne at the young age of 18, he had the power to make his dream concrete and stucco. Neuschwanstein was designed first by a theater-set designer ... then by an architect. While it was built upon the ruins of an old castle and looks medieval, Neuschwanstein is modern iron-and- brick construction with a sandstone veneer -- only about as old as the Eiffel Tower. Built from 1869 to 1886, it's the epitome of the Romanticism popular in 19th-century Europe. Construction stopped with Ludwig's death (only a third of the interior was finished), and within six weeks, tourists were paying to go through it."
Looking up at the castle from the lower courtyard. It's impossible to get a good picture of the castle up close; it's too big.
The guided tour was only about 30 minutes. Again, no photography. We got to visit 15 or so rooms with their original furnishings and wall paintings.
Unlike Hohenschwangau, thankfully Wikipedia has some good interior pictures of Neuschwanstein, courtesy the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division.
Here is the large Throne Hall with a two-million-stone mosaic floor showing plants and animals.
It is possible to cross the bridge and climb still higher, although there is no trail. You can see a guy in an aqua shirt up there. Per Rick Steves: "For an even more glorious castle view, the frisky can hike even higher: After crossing the bridge, you'll see very rough, steep, unofficial trails... If you're willing to ignore the "risk of death' signs, you can scamper up tothe bluff just over the bridge."
You couldn't pay me enough to go up there. Well, maybe you could, but it would have to be a lot!
In fact, I couldn't even go out onto the bridge because of my fear of heights. Lynnette took all the pictures from the bridge.
