Heidelberg Castle

Heidelberg Castle stands about 80 metres up the northern slope of the Königstuhl hill, looking down over the Old Town of Heidelberg and the River Neckar in Baden-Württemberg. Building began before 1214, and for centuries the castle was the residence of the Electors Palatine, among the most powerful princes of the Holy Roman Empire. It is now owned by the state of Baden-Württemberg.

The castle grew over several centuries into a group of palaces around a central courtyard and was largely complete by 1650. Lightning destroyed the upper castle in 1537. French troops set it on fire and blew up parts of it in 1689 and again in 1693 during the Nine Years' War. In 1720 the Electors moved their court to Mannheim, and after another lightning strike and fire in 1764 the castle was left as a ruin.

Its red sandstone buildings are among the most important Renaissance structures north of the Alps. The courtyard is framed by the richly carved facade of the Ottheinrich Building and the Friedrich Building, which was restored between 1897 and 1900 and is decorated with statues of the Palatine rulers. The blown-up Powder Tower, with a large section split off and lying beside it, is one of the most striking sights. The cellar holds the Heidelberg Tun, a giant wine barrel, and the castle also houses the German Pharmacy Museum.

From the early 1800s the French émigré Count Charles de Graimberg worked to save the ruin, and it became a symbol of German Romanticism. J. M. W. Turner painted it, and Mark Twain described it in A Tramp Abroad in 1880.

The castle ticket costs €11 for adults and €5.50 reduced, and it covers the courtyard, the barrel cellar, the pharmacy museum and the return funicular ride from Kornmarkt. Guided tours are needed to see the interiors. The terrace and gardens give wide views over the Old Town, and the path up on foot from Kornmarkt takes about 15 minutes.

The castle hill is called the Jettenbühl, after Jetta, a soothsayer said to have lived there. The oldest known picture of the castle appears in Sebastian Münster's Kalendarium Hebraicum of 1527. Martin Luther was shown around in 1518 during the Heidelberg Disputation and praised its beauty and defences in a letter. After the Council of Constance in 1415, the deposed antipope John XXIII was held prisoner here.

The terraced Hortus Palatinus garden was laid out around 1610 for Elector Frederick V by Salomon de Caus. The slope needed so much earth moving that contemporaries called it the eighth wonder of the world. Down in the cellar, the court jester Perkeo was put in charge of the wine stock by Elector Charles III Philip, and his statue facing the great barrel has become the unofficial mascot of the city. A tablet in the garden, put up in 1961, honours Goethe and Marianne von Willemer near the spot of a ginkgo tree planted in 1795.

The castle sits about 80 metres above the Old Town on an intermediate station of the Heidelberger Bergbahn, which continues up to the Königstuhl summit. Heidelberg University surveys rank it as the city's most important attraction, and the courtyard is busiest from late morning, so take the funicular early.