Above the valley mist
The isolated summit lifts it above morning fog — the image from the photographs.
A. Kniesel (= User:-donald-), Lauffen — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Sven Teschke — CC BY-SA 3.0 de · Jörg Wendland — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Frank Nowotny — CC BY-SA 4.0
By train from Stuttgart to Hechingen, then a local bus to the castle car park, then about half an hour on foot or by shuttle. The whole journey is around two hours each way, so start early and check the local bus times, as they are infrequent.
It is enough to see the architecture, the walls and the surrounding view, which is the greater part of the visual value. But the family holdings and the Prussian crown are inside the rooms and are seen only on the guided tour. If you have travelled two hours, book the tour so the trip is complete.
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A castle crowning an isolated peak among the hills of the Swabian Alb, the ancestral seat of the House of Hohenzollern, which ruled Prussia and went on to provide Germany's emperors. What stands today is not a medieval castle but a mid-nineteenth-century rebuilding. The two earlier castles on the site were destroyed, and the Prussian king Frederick William IV rebuilt it entirely in a romantic style, as the nineteenth century imagined castles ought to look. That explains its perfect theatrical appearance: the pointed turrets and winding walls were designed to look exactly like this. Its position on an isolated summit lifts it above the valley mist in the early morning, and that is the image you know from photographs. Inside, the Hohenzollern family's holdings are displayed, among them the Prussian crown. It is not in Stuttgart: it lies about 65 kilometres south and needs a car, or a train and a bus, so count it as a day out rather than a stop. From the car park there is a walk up or a shuttle bus.
The isolated summit lifts it above morning fog — the image from the photographs.
Among the family holdings displayed inside the castle.
The pointed turrets were designed to look ideal, which is why it is photographed so much.
On the Hohenzollern mountain, about 65 km south of Stuttgart