The towers
A storybook castle.
Rosa-Maria Rinkl — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Molgreen — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Bärbel Miemietz — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Jasnaah — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Tournasol7 — CC BY-SA 4.0
Wernigerode Castle is a palace on a hill in the Harz mountains above the town of Wernigerode in Saxony-Anhalt, central Germany, about 24 km west of Quedlinburg in a straight line. It was first built in the early 12th century as a Romanesque fortress where German emperors stopped on hunting trips in the Harz; little of those first walls remains. It was enlarged in Gothic style in the late 15th century and rebuilt several times. The present building was completed in the late 19th century and is similar in style to Neuschwanstein. With many pointed towers, dark roofs and red stone walls, the castle crowns a wooded hill above the town and looks like a castle from a storybook from afar. From its terraces the view sweeps over the town's red roofs, the Harz forests and the Brocken summit. Visitors walk up the hill in about half an hour, or take a small road train or horse-drawn carriage from town. Inside is a museum with furnished 19th-century rooms. In town, the narrow-gauge Harz steam railway sets off for the Brocken summit.
A storybook castle.
Furnished rooms.
To the Brocken.
Above Wernigerode, Harz mountains, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
On foot, by road train or carriage.
The Harz steam railway to the Brocken.