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| You don't scare me, lion. I'm off to see a castle. |
The "Mad" King Ludwig (Ludwig II) ruled Bavaria for 22 years until his early, untimely and rather suspicious death in 1886 - he was only 40 and had just a week earlier been declared mentally unfit to rule, then exiled, then found dead in a lake, we may never know if by murder or suicide or an unfortunate accident. From all accounts, Ludwig wasn't much of a ruler. Most of his reign he was considered a pawn of either Prussia or Austria; rather than deal with politics in Munich, Ludwig spent much of his time outside of Fussen. He stayed primarily in his family hunting lodge, Hohenschwangau while constructing his fanciful castle on the next hill over, Neuschwanstein. Ludwig was a romantic as were many of his cohorts -- most of his friends and contacts were artist, poets and composers (Richard Wagner being one of his most frequent guests).
We started our tour at Hoenschwangau Castle where Ludwig spent his summers as a young boy.
As Ludwig grew up, the legend goes that he would stare out the window of Hoenschwangau towards the neighboring hilltop and dream of his own palace. Who knows if this is true, but one does have a pretty good view of the other.
After a quick lunch, we did the (per the guide books) "moderately steep, 30-minute hike" up to Neuschwanstein. They weren't kidding about this description.
The view from the top is beautiful - and almost worth all the whining by the under 8-year old crew.
From there, we still had about 45 minutes until our scheduled time to tour Neuschwanstein, so we kept hiking up to Marienbrücke (Mary's Bridge), named for Ludwig's mom. The bridge is (and DEFINETLY was 100 years ago when it was built) a feat of engineering.
In 1845, Maximilian ordered a wooden footbridge to be built across Pöllat gorge. This bridge was constructed using traditional timber construction and most likely turned out to be not very stable. In order to increase the bridge’s stability, a structure consisting of three layers of beams and lateral support beams was chosen. The resulting building, stretching to 35 meters in length, however, did not offer an aesthetically pleasing sight.
When Ludwig took over, he replaced the ugly structure with a filigree iron structure in 1866. During the construction of Marienbrücke, a completely new method of construction was successfully tested: At an altitude of 90 meters above Pöllat cascade, the girders were erected from the anchors in the rock on either side by pre-constructing the individual support frames, without requiring further supportive braces.
In 1984, the bridge was restored and the girders had to be renewed and in 2015 several anchors were replaced. The barristers, however, are still the original ones used in 1866.
I'm grateful for all these engineering checks, because as you can see from the photo, there were just a few people trying to occupy the bridge at the same time.
In 1845, Maximilian ordered a wooden footbridge to be built across Pöllat gorge. This bridge was constructed using traditional timber construction and most likely turned out to be not very stable. In order to increase the bridge’s stability, a structure consisting of three layers of beams and lateral support beams was chosen. The resulting building, stretching to 35 meters in length, however, did not offer an aesthetically pleasing sight.
When Ludwig took over, he replaced the ugly structure with a filigree iron structure in 1866. During the construction of Marienbrücke, a completely new method of construction was successfully tested: At an altitude of 90 meters above Pöllat cascade, the girders were erected from the anchors in the rock on either side by pre-constructing the individual support frames, without requiring further supportive braces.
In 1984, the bridge was restored and the girders had to be renewed and in 2015 several anchors were replaced. The barristers, however, are still the original ones used in 1866.
I'm grateful for all these engineering checks, because as you can see from the photo, there were just a few people trying to occupy the bridge at the same time.
We eventually navigated our way through the crowd to the approximate middle of the bridge. What a sight to see!
Of course, my children immediately questioned why we could not hang glide our way back to the castle but rather had walk more.
Back down at the castle, we headed inside for our second tour. In the tour they stated that the original drawings for the castle were made by a theatre set designer, then once Ludwig was happy with them, passed along to an architect who had to make the design structurally stable. Ludwig's extravagance is on display throughout with gilded chandeliers and mosaic floors, carved canopy beds and marble wash basins. Our guidebook noted that it was about 1/3 finished when construction stopped upon Ludwig's exile and subsequent death and about two months later it was opened up to tourists. I can only imagine the time (& money!) it would have taken to finish the whole building to Ludwig's standards.
