Germany Guide
The Alps and eastern Bavaria
Schloss Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau
The vision of the pinnacled and turreted castle of Neuschwanstein (frequent guided tours daily: April– Sept 9am–6pm; Oct– March 10am–4pm; €9 or €17 combined ticket with Schloss Hohenschwangau; 
www.neuschwanstein.de ), perched high on its crag and rising above the mist, is perhaps the most reproduced of all tourist images of Germany, a Disney-like fantasy amid a setting of breathtaking alpine beauty. If it all seems too good to be true, that's no surprise, for it is the most celebrated and the most theatrical of all "Mad" King Ludwig II's castles, and has its origins in his desire to rebuild an existing ruin in the authentic style of the old German knights' castles. Ludwig was inspired by the recently restored Wartburg in Thuringia; his architects, Eduard Riedel and Georg Dollmann – who would go on to design Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee – worked from idealized drawings by the theatre designer Christian Jank. Construction began in 1869, the castle was "topped out" in 1880 and the king was able to move into the (still unfinished) Pallas, or castle keep, in 1884. Ludwig chopped and changed the plans as he went along, incorporating a huge throne room that required ultramodern steel-framed construction methods to make it structurally viable.
The exterior of Neuschwanstein, in a sort of exaggerated Romanesque, is theatrical enough, but the real flights of fancy begin inside, where the decorative schemes are inspired by Wagner's operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. The Byzantine-style Thronsaal (Throne Room), inspired by the church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, was intended to represent the Grail Hall from Parsifal and was completed in the year of Ludwig's death, 1886. Ludwig's bedroom is in a heightened Gothic style, with the king's four-poster bed more closely resembling some fifteenth-century church altar than a place in which to sleep. The highlight – and peak of the king's Wagnerian obsession – however, is the Sängersaal, or Singers' Hall, which occupies the entire fourth floor and was inspired by the famous hall at the Wartburg that was the scene of the Singers' Contest from Tannhäuser. If you've not seen it on your way from the bus, it's worth strolling uphill to the Marienbrücke after the tour finishes for the dramatic views down into the Pöllat gorge and across to the castle.
If it weren't literally and figuratively overshadowed by Neuschwanstein, Schloss Hohenschwangau (guided tours daily: April– Sept 9am–6pm; Oct– March 9am–3.30pm; €8, or €17 combined ticket with Neuschwanstein), in the valley below Ludwig's castle at the southern end of the village, might be more widely famous. Standing on a low wooded hill above Alpsee, it was a ruin when Ludwig's father, Maximilian II, bought it in 1832 while still crown prince, and had it rebuilt in a prettily romantic neo-Gothic style. Ludwig II spent much of his childhood here, and it was here that he first encountered the legend of Lohengrin, the Swan Knight, as the Schloss is decorated with frescoes on the theme by Michael Neher and Lorenz Quaglio. Schloss Hohenschwangau still belongs to a Wittelsbach trust, not to the state of Bavaria, and part of its charm is that it feels altogether more homely than its showy neighbour.