Neuschwanstein

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Official Site (neuschwanstein.de)

This remarkable castle in Bavaria, south-east Germany, looks like something out of a fairy-tale story, which is pretty much what it is. It was built towards the end of the 19th century on the orders of King Ludwig II, the King of Bavaria, whose increasingly tenuous grip on reality encouraged him to construct a castle that would allow him to retreat from a world he had never much enjoyed anyway. “I want to remain an eternal mystery to myself and others,” he is reported to have said, and got his wish when he drowned in strange circumstances 1886 at the age of 22, having been declared insane. By then, his dream castle – with its bewitching views over the lakes of the East Allgaeu plain – was nearing completion, and well over one million visitors a year now flock to a building that was once intended to be the home of a single man. The construction itself is a staggering achievement and reflects Ludwig’s obsessions with myth, legend, the holy grail and the German composer Richard Wagner. Stunning from the outside, it is lavish within, and no visit to Bavaria is complete without it.

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