Heart of Europe, 1996: Castles

Castles could be considered Germany's iconic structures. We saw several wonderful examples on our cruise along the Rhine. Follow this link to see several pictures of these Rhine castles, but two representative structures are on the left and below.

Later, during our week in Bavaria, we visited two even more famous structures, the "fairy tale" castles built by "mad" King Ludwig II in the spectacular mountains of southern Germany:

Linderhof • Neuschwanstein

Linderhof is a beautiful place in a wonderful setting. You can get an idea of the surrounding scenery here...

Unfortunately we didn't get any panoramic shots of the palace and its gardens but you can see some by following the link above (the website even has some 360° panoramas). Wikipedia's article also has links to some good photos.

Here are a couple of our more wide-angle efforts:

The opulent exterior of the palace is matched, or even exceeded, by the interior. It's hard to take pictures inside there, but Henry managed these, which can give you an idea...

...but we were most enchanted by the grounds, gardens, and fountains...

A reason for our lack of panoramic photos was the weather...it was cloudy and rainy, as you can see by the umbrellas in the photo on the right.

One of them is Kathy's...she and Sally are walking up the stairs but Hal seems unfazed by the rain and remained on the landing above the fountain-scape...with the lions.

The park surrounding the palace is more than just grass and trees. It contains some quirkily Romantic outbuildings...one of the most memorable is the "Moorish kiosk." We were reminded of it when we visited the even grander Sanssouci palace in Potsdam 12 years later; it has a similar exotic outbuilding they call a "Chinese House."

Germany's most famous castle is Neuschwanstein, incredibly impressive in its gorgeous alpine setting.

Henry took the photo on the right, below, as we left, looking back up at the structure.

As grand and elaborate as Neuschwanstein is, when you get close up to it, the space seems a little odd.

It's ultimately a large movie set, architecturally fully realized, but missing any sense of being lived in. After all, Ludwig died long before construction was completed. So no royalty has ever actually lived here.

But, it is gorgeous...

It's in the interior that the missing "soul" of Neuschwanstein is most apparent, but there are lovely touches. One of them is this swan, an elegant decorative representation of the castle's totem creature...

The nearby castle of Hohenschwangau, where Ludwig's parents lived and where he grew up, is also gorgeous and has the advantage of historical interest as well.

Tootsie went on a tour of Hohenschwangau while we were at Neuschwanstein, and if we make another visit to Bavaria, that's what we'll do, too.

...view of Hohenschwangau from Neuschwanstein...

As you can see from this panoramic view, the scenery around Neuschwanstein is even more impressive than the castle itself. The Wikipedia article on it has an even more wide-angle panoramic (as well as a wealth of castle construction details).

Henry was quite taken with the Neuschwanstein environs and took several photos on our walk to the castle and on his longer, round-about walk back to the car.