Bavaria's Fairy-Tale Castles: Neuschwanstein and Beyond
King Ludwig II of Bavaria built Neuschwanstein as a personal fantasy — a medieval castle that never existed, perched on a crag above the Bavarian Alps — and it became the template for every fairy-tale castle since.
Neuschwanstein Castle was built between 1869 and 1886 by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, a monarch so devoted to the operas of Richard Wagner and the mythology of medieval Germany that he spent most of his reign and most of his personal fortune constructing a series of fantasy palaces in the Bavarian Alps. Neuschwanstein — the name means 'New Swan Stone' — was designed not by an architect but by a theatrical set designer, Christian Jank, and the result is a building that looks more like a stage set than a real castle: towers, turrets, and battlements in a Romanesque Revival style that never actually existed in the Middle Ages.
The interior of Neuschwanstein is as theatrical as the exterior. The Throne Room, modelled on the Byzantine churches of Constantinople, has walls covered in gold mosaic and a floor of two million marble tesserae depicting animals and plants. The Singer's Hall, inspired by the hall in Wagner's Tannhäuser, occupies the entire top floor of the castle and is decorated with scenes from the Parsifal legend. Ludwig II lived in the castle for only 172 days before his mysterious death in 1886 — he was found drowned in a lake, along with his psychiatrist, the day after being declared insane and deposed.
The view of Neuschwanstein from the Marienbrücke — a narrow iron bridge spanning a gorge 90 metres above the Pöllat waterfall — is the classic image of the castle, with its white towers rising above the forest and the Alpsee lake glittering in the valley below. The bridge is a 20-minute walk from the castle entrance, and the queue to stand on it can be long in summer, but the view is worth the wait. The castle itself receives 1.4 million visitors a year, making it the most visited castle in Germany and one of the most visited in the world.
Hohenschwangau Castle, at the foot of the hill below Neuschwanstein, was the childhood home of Ludwig II and was built by his father, King Maximilian II, in the 1830s. It is a more modest building than Neuschwanstein but contains the original furnishings and decorations of the Wittelsbach royal family, and the rooms where Ludwig grew up — surrounded by murals depicting the legends of the medieval German knights that would obsess him throughout his life — provide essential context for understanding the fantasy he later created on the hill above.
The Romantic Road, a 460-kilometre tourist route through Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, connects Neuschwanstein to a series of medieval towns and castles that represent a more authentic version of the fairy-tale Germany that Ludwig was trying to recreate. Rothenburg ob der Tauber, the best-preserved medieval walled town in Germany, is the highlight of the route — a town of half-timbered houses, cobblestone streets, and a complete circuit of medieval walls that has changed little since the 17th century.
Munich, the capital of Bavaria and the nearest major city to Neuschwanstein, is one of the most liveable cities in Germany — a city of beer gardens, baroque churches, world-class museums, and the English Garden, a 370-hectare park larger than Central Park in New York. The Deutsches Museum, the world's largest science and technology museum, and the Alte Pinakothek, which contains one of the finest collections of Old Master paintings in Europe, are both worth a full day. The Oktoberfest, held in late September and early October, draws six million visitors a year to the Theresienwiese fairground.
The best time to visit Neuschwanstein is in spring (April-May) or autumn (September-October), when the crowds are smaller and the surrounding landscape is at its most beautiful — the meadows below the castle are carpeted with wildflowers in spring, and the forests turn gold and red in autumn. In winter, when snow covers the castle and the surrounding Alps, the fairy-tale quality of the setting is at its most intense, though the shorter days and colder temperatures require more preparation. Booking tickets in advance is essential at any time of year — the castle sells out weeks ahead during the summer months.
