Confessions of a Castleholic

After a long day of castle adventures back in September that included visits to  Schloss Weissenstein , Schloss Castell , Schloss Rüdenhausen and Schloss Wiesentheid , I also stopped by Kloster Bronnbach . Going to the monastery turned castle felt a bit like going to the end of the world. Arriving there from the direction of Würzburg, you pass woods, fields, more fields, and, yes, even more fields. Nestled deep in the Tauber valley, the little village today is a part of the town of Wertheim. The name might ring a bell for some of you and so it won't come as a big surprise that the Bronnbach Abbey was once the home of the Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg.  Legend has it that Bernard of Clairvaux, a French abbot and the primary reformer of the Cistercian order, himself wished for the foundation of a monastery in the valley when visiting Wertheim. According to legend, three noblemen then chose the exact spot based on the appearance of three white singing...

Being a bit of a castle adventurer, it will not come as a surprise to any regular reader of this blog that I have visited a fair number of castles in my lifetime and have read about even more.  Schloss Weikersheim , however,   even took me by surprise. Frankly, I had never heard about it before I went to Franconia earlier this year to visit Würzburg and go to see that royal wedding . Rather spontaneously, I decided to google for a few more castles in the vicinity of Würzburg and stumbled over this gem in the tiny town of Weikersheim in Baden-Württemberg. A former home to the Hohenlohe family, wandering through its gardens somehow reminded me of a cross between France and Tuscany.  Nestled in the hilly vineyards close to the Main and Tauber rivers, the origins of today's castle lie in the 12th century when Konrad and Heinrich of „Wighartesheim“ were firstly mentioned. Heinrich later took the name "Hohenloch", which would evolve into "Hohenlohe" over the y...