october '16: heidelberg pt I

october '16: heidelberg pt I - the castle.

heidelberg castle is probably the most famous castle ruin in germany and mainly because it is a perfect example of renaissance architecture ( which i think we don't have a lot of around here ). it's probably the most dramatic ruin as well with its blasted towers and facade silhouettes. it wasn't destroyed in world war II but in the war of grand alliance ( 17th century ) and has been a ruin since then. even the famous writer & poet goethe visited this place and praised the 'romantic' ruins of heidelberg. the castle always was known for its famous gardens as well, hortus palatinus. another superlative you have to see is the grand wine barrel, which is supposed to hold 220.000 litres of wine. and, i should mention, they have a wonderful apothecary museum, which i LOVED ( more on that in a different post ).

since the castle is so well known worldwide there were a lot of tourists around ( and we unfortunately had the glorious idea to visit on a weekend :( ), which basically means it was PACKED. i think i would've enjoyed it more to wander the ruins and the apothecary museum with less crowds surrounding us, but you have to deal with momentary situations as they are presented to you, right? the whole city of heidelberg was overcrowded that day, and while the city is such a beautiful place, i really was glad to leave at the end of the day. i realized again that while i'm not afraid of masses, i still get really grumpy and annoyed after spending too much time around such an overload of people.

let's have a look at the castle grounds!

we first had to climb up a very steep pathway.

showcases perfectly how steep the pathway was :D

inside the old wall gaps you could find little galaxies of spiderweb.

everything was overgrown with ivy.

finally at the top of the mountain you were introduced to a beautiful view onto heidelberg.

and finally you got the first glimpse of one of the many castle buildings: the friedrichsbau. the details on this building are mindblowing. the building has two very representative facades, towards the city it's a little less elaborate than towards the castle court where the erector friedrich IV decided to showcase some kind of ancestral portrait gallery.

the bell tower on the left was not destroyed by war, a lightning bolt struck it in 1764 and since then it remained a ruin.

i do believe this is the castle's church.

inside the court you have access to all the other buildings. on the left you can see the ruins of the ruprecht building. in the back there's the gate tower and on the left the economy building.

the court facade of the friedrichsbau. the sculptures are depicting 16 ancestors of friedrich IV.

a better picture of the friedrichsbau facade. ludwig VI is on the left and johann casimir on the right.

there's a story to this angel emblem: the angels depict the children of the architect who fell off the scaffolding during the erection of the building and perished. the architect was so grief-stricken that operations stopped for a while until the the emperor ruprecht told him to continue. the architect then decided to complete the building with this emblem, as a memorial for his children.

view from the main entrance of the castle towards friedrichsbau & ottheinrichsbau.

castle ruin silhouettes. this was shot from the library building which was never a library but housed a dining hall & probably the forgery. you can see the english building from here & the remains of the fat tower.

i loved the structures of remaining walls where you could see that cannon balls had struck them.

above the entry of the gate tower: some more statues.

the krautturm was really impressing. it is also called the blasted tower and it lays bare the inside of it quite dramatically. one part of the tower broke off of it after it was blasted by french soldiers in 1689.

more destruction structures.

it's mesmerizing to still see a part of the tower still standing upright and strong, while the other half of the mantle lies visibly at the foot of the tower. to see the strength of the wall gives you perspective on the architectural abilities of the erectors.

the city facade of the ottheinrichsbau.

father rhine inside an empty basin. this is part of the hortus palatinus, the palace garden. in the back you can see the entry to the big grotto.

the big grotto has several animal sculptures as decorating elements.

this is me on a bad day, haha.

a beautiful fire salamander as door knob decoration would be on the top of my 'what i want to have in my house'-list, ha.

strange-looking goethe bust ( i guess it's the neck, it's far too big, haha ). goethe fell in love with a woman in heidelberg when he was about 65 years old & they always met inside the gardens of the palace. there's a stone bench commemorating that affair. the woman was marianne von willemer and she wrote a few poems that were released in the west-eastern divan orchestra by goethe later on.

view onto the neckar river and the mansions on the other side of it.

the gläserne saalbau ( mirror hall building ) right between friedrichsbau & ottheinrichsbau. as the name suggests there's a mirror hall inside the building ;) we decided to enter the apothecary museum inside the ottheinrichsbau next, but i will show you the pictures of that in my next post.