Confessions of a Castleholic

Let's have a walk down memory lane to the year 2013 and a visit to Burg Königstein in the Taunus region of Germany.

A hunting lodge that never was but instead, later, a disco - that's the Gotisches Haus in Bad Homburg for you. Located on the outskirts of the city, it is connected via a park system, which partly is no more, with Schloss Bad Homburg . The Gotisches Haus (literally Gothic House) was built at the behest of Landgravine Elizabeth of Hesse-Homburg, a daughter of King George III of Great Britain and Ireland, as a gift for her husband, Landgrave Friedrich III, in Neo-Gothic style. Construction of the Gotisches Haus started on April 17, 1823, the day the first stone was laid. While the architect isn't known for certain, some believe that the plans for the hunting lodge to be used for festivities and trips were drawn up by Jeffry Wyatville, an English architect mainly remembered for making alterations and extensions to Chatsworth House and Windsor Castle. The construction works were overseen by Georg Moller. However, the works on the Gotisches Haus abruptly stopped at t...

Located in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, a small town east of Frankfurt, Schloss Bad Homburg started out as the residence of the Landgraves of Hesse-Homburg and later became a summer home of the Prussian royal family. Consisting of buildings surrounding two courtyards, the oldest part of the castle is the Weißer Turm , or white tower. Measuring more than 48 metres in height, the keep dates back to the 14th century and goes to show that there were other castles located on the same site before. Today's Schloss Bad Homburg was built by Landgrave Friedrich II of Hesse-Homburg starting in 1680. The Hesse-Homburgs were a branch line of the the landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt, who later became Grand Dukes of Hesse and by Rhine. Landgrave Friedrich II himself later achieved fame as the name giver of Heinrich Kleist's play "The Prince of Homburg" though besides the name and place, there is little similarity between the play, which was written in 1809–10 and firstly perform...

Schloss Friedrichshof , today better known as Schlosshotel Kronberg , is located above the picturesque small Taunus town of Kronberg in the middle of an impressive park just east of Frankfurt. It was built for German Empress Victoria, née the Princess Royal, between 1889 and 1893. To honour her husband, Emperor Friedrich III who had reigned for only 99 days in 1888, the Year of the three Emperors, the daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had named for him. In 1888 shortly after her husband's death, Empress Victoria, mother of the last Kaiser , purchased about 100 acres of land including a luxury villa from the heirs of Frankfurt financier Jacques Reiss. After additional purchases surrounding the estate, she commissioned architect Ernst von Ihme to build her dowager seat. In his plans, Ihme combined elements of German and Italian Renaissance, English Neo-Gothic Tudor-style and Hesse-Franconian timber framing. The appearance of the castle reminds of a large English ...