Today, we left Munich and drove two hours to the small village of Hohenschwangau, high in the Bavarian Alps. This placid mountain settlement is home to two Baroque royal palaces, Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein. We highly recommend buying your tickets and choosing tour times in advance. Castle ticket information Here.
We first visited Hohenschwangau, built on the orders of King Maximillian II of Bavaria in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Though most of the palace is just over a century old, it rests atop the foundations of a much older castle that dates to 1397.
Castle Hohenschwangau was built as a mountain retreat for the King and Queen of Bavaria, and features spectacular views of the mountainside, village, and lakes that surround it. Though much of the interior is finished in a Neo-Gothic style designed to imitate a medieval castle, it also features modern conveniences, including an early electric elevator, installed on the orders of the wheelchair-bound King.
King Maximillian II was regarded as a competent, level-headed ruler with a passion for academic study. His son, King Ludwig II– who assumed the throne after Maximillian’s death in 1864– would prove to be a very different type of monarch.
The eccentric Ludwig had little interest in managing the affairs of the Bavarian state. He launched a series of expensive vanity projects, emptying the kingdom’s coffers building himself several extravagant castles, inspired by the fantastical realms depicted in the opera, with which he was obsessed. One such project was Neuschwanstein Castle.
King Ludwig died under mysterious circumstances in 1886, just two years after the external structure of the palace was completed; many suspect he was murdered by other members of the royal family, with whom he had become deeply unpopular after nearly bankrupting the country.
The castle’s interior was never finished. Only around ten percent of its rooms were ever fully outfitted according to the King’s specifications, and much of the castle still has bare stone walls and rough, unfinished floors.
Between the two palaces, by the village of Hohenschwangau, is a beautiful, crystal-clear lake, where King Maximillian used to swim.
After eating authentic Bavarian pretzels and cheese, we drove back to Munich. The Bavarian Alps are a uniquely beautiful place, with thick, sweet-smelling pine forests, glassy lakes and rushing waterfalls, surrounded by verdant fields dotted by tiny mountain villages. It is a place that seems unbelievable at first– almost as if it were pulled directly from the pages of a storybook written a century ago. It is truly magnificent.
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Have a great adventure!
The Passporter