Heidelberg Castle

Put your hand on the nearest wall. The stone is red, soft and slightly gritty, like coarse sandpaper warmed by the sun. This is Neckar sandstone, cut from the hills around you. Below, the river Neckar runs past the old town's roofs. Above, empty window frames open onto nothing but sky. You are standing in one of the most famous ruins in Europe. It is a palace that lost its roofs centuries ago, and somehow became more loved because of it.

For several hundred years, this hillside was the seat of the Electors Palatine. These were among the most powerful princes of the Holy Roman Empire, the loose union of German lands that lasted until the early nineteenth century. An Elector was one of the few rulers who chose the emperor. That gave the family here real weight in European politics. Each new ruler wanted his own mark on the castle, so it grew wing by wing, style by style.

That is why the courtyard can feel like several buildings arguing with each other. Look for the Ottheinrich Building, named after the Elector Ottheinrich, who ruled in the mid-sixteenth century. Its facade is one of the earliest grand Renaissance fronts north of the Alps. Statues stand in rows of niches — heroes from the Bible, figures from Roman myth, and personifications of virtues. Behind that rich surface, there is very little left. The front survives. The rooms behind it are mostly gone.

Next to it stands the Friedrich Building, completed in the early seventeenth century. Its facade carries statues of the Elector's ancestors, a stone family tree meant to show visitors that this dynasty was old and legitimate. Many of the original statues were moved inside to protect them from the weather, and copies stand outside today. This wing was restored in the late nineteenth century, so it gives you a rare sense of what a finished room here once looked like.

Now for a love story. In 1613, the young Elector Frederick the Fifth married Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of King James the First of England. He built an English Building for her and laid out terraces for a vast garden, the Hortus Palatinus. Its designer, Salomon de Caus, planned grottoes, fountains and mechanical water features. Visitors of the time praised it highly. But the garden was never finished. History interrupted it.

In 1619, Frederick accepted the crown of Bohemia. It was a bold move against the Habsburg emperor, and it helped spark the Thirty Years' War. He lost Bohemia within about a year. People mockingly called him the Winter King, because his reign lasted roughly one winter. He and Elizabeth spent long years in exile. The castle they had planned to make into a paradise was occupied, damaged and left behind.

While you walk the garden side, look for a small archway called the Elizabeth Gate. Legend has it that Frederick had it built in a single night as a birthday surprise for his wife. It is a lovely story, and locals still tell it with pleasure. Whether the masons really worked by torchlight until dawn is another matter. Treat it as a tale about a young couple in love, not a building record.

The real destruction came later, at the end of the seventeenth century. During the War of the Palatine Succession, French troops of King Louis the Fourteenth attacked the region. In 1689, and again in 1693, they blew up parts of the castle and burned the town below. Then, in 1764, lightning struck and set fire to the rebuilt sections. After that, the court had already moved away, and the Electors never came back to live here.

Here is a detail many visitors walk straight past. Find the Powder Tower, also called the Blown-Up Tower. French sappers tried to destroy it with explosives. The blast tore off a huge section of wall, and that section slid down into the moat in one piece. It still lies there, tilted, with its masonry intact. You can see the thickness of the old walls in a clean cross-section, like a slice through a cake.

Then go down to the cellar for the second surprise. Here sits the Heidelberg Tun, an enormous wooden wine barrel. It is so large that a dance floor was built on top of it. Watching over it is a carved figure of Perkeo, a court jester from the Tyrol. According to popular tale, he drank wine all day and fell dead after finally drinking a glass of water. It is folklore, but Heidelberg loves it.

Why didn't anyone rebuild the castle? By the nineteenth century, people did not want to. The Romantic movement, which prized ruins, nature and feeling over order, had discovered Heidelberg. Poets and painters came to sketch the broken towers. A French émigré, Charles de Graimberg, worked for decades to protect the ruins and to record them in drawings. Later, Mark Twain wrote about the castle in his travel book A Tramp Abroad. A long debate followed over restoration, and the ruin largely stayed a ruin.

One more thing to keep in mind as you explore. Inside the castle, you will find the German Apothecary Museum, a collection about the history of pharmacy. It holds old jars, medicine chests and reconstructed pharmacy rooms. It may seem an odd fit for a prince's palace, but it suits the quiet rooms well. If you have time, the terraces also lead out to viewpoints over the old bridge and the town. Across the river, the Philosophers' Walk gives the classic view back here.

So, before you leave, stand still on the terrace for a moment. Listen to the river traffic and the bells from the old town. Look again at the red stone and its dark stains of soot and rain. This place was built to impress, then broken in war, then saved by people who loved it for being broken. As you walk down the hill, glance back once. The empty windows will still be watching the Neckar.