Confessions of a Castleholic

Towering high above the town of Salzburg is the Festung Hohensalzburg . The fortress is one of Austria's most visited tourist destinations, actually the most visited outside of Vienna, and it's not hard to guess why. Built at the behest of the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg with a length of 250 metres and a width of 150 metres, it is one of the largest medieval castles in Europe and spans a history of almost 1000 years. It was in the year 1077 that Archbishop Gebhard von Helfenstein commanded the construction of the fortress overlooking the Salzach river and the surrounding valley on four sides. It is likely that a wooden fortification had already been situated on the hill previously. During the following years, decades and centuries, his successors developed and expanded the Festung to represent and protect their ever-growing powers that also included the secular rule over the Prince-Archbishopric. Archbishop Konrad I (1106-1147) added a keep and also during the 12th an...

Today I am going to tell you a story. The story of an eleven-year-old girl who went to Schloss Possenhofen in Bavaria with her parents and was utterly disappointed. Why? Because it looked nothing like she had imagined. The young girl grew up religiously watching the "Sissi" movies for every Christmas since she can remember. However, the real life Possenhofen looked nothing like the movie version. That was, of course, because the movies weren't filmed at the actual childhood home of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Instead, a certain Schloss Fuschl was chosen as the director thought it looked much more romantic and fairytale-like. Probably not very surprisingly, the girl in this story is actually me - and more than 15 years on I actually managed to see my real Possenhofen better known as  Schloss Fuschl in Austria's Salzkammergut region. It was on the way back from the Kaiservilla in Bad Ischl to Bavaria that we made a quick stop nearby to catch a glimpse of ...

The view from Mirabell Gardens towards the Festung Hohensalzburg stronghold with Schloss Mirabell on the left might just be the most famous one of all of Salzburg. The city's Altstadt (old town), which is considered one of the best-preserved city centres north of the Alps, including Schloss Mirabell and its gardens became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.  The masterpiece that is Mirabell palace was initially built as Schloss Altenau under the reign of Prince-Archbishop Wolf Dietrich of Raitenau in 1606. It was a present for his mistress Salome Alt. Together the couple had 15 children and while the Prince-Archbishop's children were actually legtitimised by the Emperor and they and his mistress given hereditary noble titles, this helped little when Raitenau was deposed and arrested in 1612. Raitenau's nephew and successor, Markus Sittikus of Hohenems, soon expelled Salome and her children from Schloss Altenau and renamed it Schloss Mirabell . For the mos...