Neuschwanstein Castle

	Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany This is King Ludwig's magnificent and most famous castle, built in the neo-late romanesque style. With its turrets and mock-medievalism, its interior styles ranging from Byzantine through Romanesque to Gothic its a real fairy-tale fantasy come true. It was built between 1869 and 1886 for the king ludwig 2. A splendid and imaginative "fairy-tale castle" high above the Alpsee lake with the Alps towering above it. Only about a third of the building was actually completed. The 15 rooms you see on the tour show astonishing craftsmanship and richness of detail. Woodcarving in Ludwig's bedroom took 14 carpenters 4 1/2 years to complete.
While the young King was studying the magnificent 11th cent. castle (the restoration of which had been completed that year), he first thought of building his own medieval castle. In the Wartburg he saw a castle that symbolised everything he loved and was obsessed by at that time - mountains, legend connected to Wagner's operas, and the middle ages. It was a castle that held more history and legend than his beloved Hohenschwangau, and he was determined to build, if not a replica of the Wartburg, then a castle of his own surpassing this one in beauty.
The Throne-Room was created as the Grail-Hall of Parsifal. It was designed in elaborate Byzantine style by Eduard Ille and Julius Hofmann. Inspired by the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (now Istanbul), the 2-story Throne Room with its series of pillars of imitation porphyry and lapis lazuli, was completed in the year of the king's death, 1886.

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