Burg Hohenzollern
Walking up to Burg Hohenzollern made me feel like I was going to die. And we didn’t even start from the bottom of the mountain. You’ll notice there aren’t any pictures of the blooming hillside, and that would be because I didn’t have the energy to lift my camera and hold it straight. B made it without much complaint or heavy breathing, but I was very much not in shape during this trip. It was also July. If you want a gently sloping walkway, try elsewhere, because this climb is all super steep stairs.
Hohenzollern was our first real castle, and the relatively modern look of it belies the fact that castles and fortified structures have existed on top of this mountain since the 11th century. The current walls were built in the 1800s during the German Romantic period, but if you go down into the lower levels of the castle, you can still see portions of the old walls and ruins. The current structure is believed to be the third castle built on the location.
Once you make it up to the castle, and through the twisting walkways and tunnels that lead up to the main level and walls, you can get a pretty spectacular view in any direction. We walked all the way around and came across several statues of Prussian rulers. It’s not really hard to imagine why a noble family would want to build on top of this mountain (or any mountain, I’m sure) – everything seems small in comparison. And for those rulers who relied on the divine right of kings, it’s harder to connect yourself more with God than living on the highest point around while your subjects look on from below.
To get into the main castle courtyard, you have to pass under this tower [below]. But you can also climb to the top of it. The stairs were…interesting, and the rooms were small and hot, which was made even worse because the tower has informational videos that people stop to see in huge, heat-trapping clusters. The one advantage of the heat was that many of the windows at the top were open, giving me a chance to get a broad shot of the castle without glass warp.
[Statue of Jobst Nikolaus von Zollern]
We were able to spend time in a few different parts of the castle, including the tower, the cellars, the chapel and some of the rooms which have been filled with Prussian historical artifacts. And then we made our way back down the mountain which, for the record, was pretty much just as bad as the climb up.