Neuschwanstein Castle
— — stone the king did not live to see finished.
Not only on a wall.
“Neuschwanstein sits on a limestone ridge above the Pollat gorge, west of the small village of Hohenschwangau in southern Bavaria. The castle was built by Ludwig II between 1869 and 1886 and never finished. From the Marienbrucke, the iron footbridge over the gorge, the towers read as a single white shape against the forest. In winter the snow holds on the slate roofs.
Neuschwanstein Castle, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Schloss Neuschwanstein stands on a 200-metre limestone outcrop above the village of Hohenschwangau, in the Allgau Alps of southwestern Bavaria, about 5 kilometres from the Austrian border. Construction was commissioned by King Ludwig II of Bavaria in 1869 and continued until his death in 1886, when work stopped with much of the interior unfinished. The castle was opened to the public seven weeks after Ludwig's death. It now receives roughly 1.4 million visitors a year, among the most visited castles in Europe.
The walls were built of local Schongau sandstone, faced with bright Salzburg marble at the entrance gate and the towers. Below the cladding, the structure uses a brick core with a then-novel steel skeleton for the upper towers; Ludwig wanted medieval geometry built with the engineering of his century. The 2.7-metre-thick foundation walls sit directly on dressed limestone bedrock, with the gorge falling sharply away on the south side. Restoration since 2013 has replaced weather-cracked sandstone using stone from the original quarries near Schongau.
Tickets must be booked online through the Bayerische Schlosserverwaltung and are timed to the half hour. Tours run roughly 35 minutes and visit the throne hall, the singers' hall, the royal bedroom, and the grotto. From the village to the castle gate is a 1.5-kilometre uphill walk of about 35 minutes; a shuttle bus runs in summer and a horse carriage in better weather. The Marienbrucke footbridge, the source of the postcard view, closes in winter when ice makes it dangerous.