Confessions of a Castleholic

* This post is part of a paid partnership with the cities of Weissenfels, Merseburg and Zeitz. * Weissenfels, deep in the heart of Saxony-Anhalt, is a city full of contradictions. Old vs. new, fallen into ruins vs. beautifully restored. All of this is represented most in the castle towering high above in the town south-west of Leipzig: Schloss Neu-Augustusburg . While half of it, at least from the exterior, shines in new splendour, the other half is falling into ruins. It is a fascinating contrast you will find all over this historically rich little town. Once the residence of the Duchy of Saxe-Weissenfels, it later became the number one shoe-manufacturing city of the German Democratic Republic. As so many places, the aftermath of unification left a lasting mark on Weissenfels with many especially young people moving away to find work elsewhere, and houses left empty. But you will find as many rays of hope here, so let's delve deeper into the things not to miss when visiting Weisse...

* This post is part of a paid partnership with the cities of Weissenfels, Merseburg and Zeitz. * Have you heard of Merseburg? This medieval German town is situated on the banks of the river Saale approximately 30 kilometres west of Leipzig. It boasts a great historical significance. Firstly mentioned in 850, it became the seat of the Bishop of Merseburg in 968 and remained so until the Reformation. During the Early and High Middle Ages, the town once was the most important Kaiserpfalz , roughly translated as imperial residence, in the East of the Holy Roman Empire for the ever-travelling ruler. While its importance somewhat faded when the modern age rolled around, it once again became the home of a ruler between 1657 to 1738 when Merseburg was the residence of the Dukes of Saxe-Merseburg, a secundogeniture of the Albertine line of the House of Wettin. Sounds interesting? Here are nine recommendations what to do and see when visiting Merseburg. Start at Schloss Merseburg , of c...

Why go to one castle if you can have three? The castles and palaces of Dornburg, all located within a few hundred metres, tower high above the Saale River in the German state of Thuringia offer exactly that possibility. All three of them were built during different periods of time and aren't actually the first castles to be located on this site. But instead of starting chronologically, let's first have a look at the newest and prettiest - yes, I'm shallow like that - of them all: the Rococo-Schloss . As the name suggests, the original Rococo-Schloss was built during the 18th century. In 1732, Duke Ernst August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach commissioned architects to build him a palace in Dornburg. The occasion? A planned military parade. (I guess you can only end up eccentric when you take August the Strong as your inspiration.) However, something must have gone wrong at the time. Soon after it was finished, the palace was demolished due to construction defects. But we are looki...

Well... Hi there, long time no post, I know. Truthfully yours truly was a bit castled out the last few weeks. I actually still visited a bunch of them - as always  you can follow my latest adventures on Instagram - but with lots of other things going on, I just didn't feel like editing pictures, writing and everything else that goes into this tiny space on the world wide web. But with the big C-word holding all our lives in a tight grip at the moment, I thought that you and me both could use some escapism. And so in today's post, we are having a closer look at a castle I visited in the fall of last year. Schloss Lübben  may not be the most visually remarkable castle featured on this blog but it definitely has the most curious castle tower of them all even beating the white tower of Schloss Bad Homburg . Frankly, you don't even really recognise it as a tower at first glance as it is an entirely separate building. (Can you spot it in the right photo above? Yep, that ...

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...