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To say that Coburg has an abundance of castles and palaces may just be the understatement of the century, we have covered more than half a dozen of them on this blog alone in the past couple of months. One still missing? The one dubbed "the Crown of Franconia", the city's oldest castle, Veste Coburg. Towering high above the city and the surrounding land, the Veste was firstly mentioned in 1056 making its origins almost a thousand years old. It was in the year 1353, that Coburg fell to Margrave Friedrich of Meissen of the House of Wettin, who continued to own Veste Coburg until the end of the monarchy in 1918. The oldest still-existing part of the Veste is the Blauer Turm, or Blue Tower, dating back to 1230. At the time, the town was controlled by the Dukes of Merania. During the early 15th century, a triple contravallation was introduced to guard the fortress. Large parts of the castle's early structures were destroyed during two fires towards the end of the 15th an…

Schloss Rietzneuendorf

December 04, 2019

At the end of a cow pasture, you can find all sorts of things. In the little village of Rietzneuendorf near Berlin, it is a castle. In fact, the cow pasture, with no cows standing on it when I visited, runs right across its access, which I thought may be a hint to its history (as there are also cow byres next to it) and being used as part of a people-owned enterprise during GDR times but sadly it's terribly hard to find anything about its history. The village seems to have been founded in 1685 by Wilhelm von Stutterheim and then later sold to the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm I. Since then it was used as a farming area. Either around 1860 or 1885, sources vary about his, a castle was constructed on the site. Either around that time or in 1893 - again, sources vary - it received its current Neo-Renaissance appearance. The castle seems to have been used by the administration of the estate. While yours truly was able to dig up some names seemingly connected to it, none of them…

Schloss Biesdorf

October 27, 2019

Time flies when you are having fun... It has been a more than a month since yours truly moved to Berlin and actually also already a couple of weeks since I visited the first castle after moving to the German capital. So where did my first Berlin castle hunting adventures take me? To Schloss Biesdorf, a fairly little known Neo-Classical palace in the east of the city. Laying in a small village just outside of the city of Berlin at the time of its creation, Schloss Biesdorf owes its existence to Hans-Brunno von Rüxleben, who purchased the estate it is situated on in 1853, and his son Baron Hans-Hermann of Rüxleben, who inherited the estate about a decade later. After his marriage to Anne Pauline Griebenow, and presumably thanks to parts of her dowry, he added several surrounding estates to the family's portfolio. At the same time, he also commissioned architect Heino Schmieden to draw up plans for an Italian-inspired palace to serve as the family home. Construction on the T-shaped …

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