Schlösser and palaces built or held by the prince-bishops, prince-archbishops, and prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire — ecclesiastical sovereigns whose temporal authority required residences blending courtly grandeur with ecclesiastical ritual.
The castles of Franconia trace a region that does not behave like other corners of Bavaria. Where Upper Bavaria built its identity around a single dynasty, the Wittelsbachs in Munich, Franconia spent five centuries divided among a dozen competing princes, none of whom could speak for the whole. The result is a particular kind of…
An electoral residence of the Archbishops of Mainz for 150 years — and the place where Johannes Gutenberg received the only public honor of his lifetime, two years before the Bechtermünze press made Eltville the fifth printing town in the German-speaking lands.
Seven castles, four architectural periods, two political traditions, and (mostly) one operator: how Bavaria came to hold four UNESCO-inscribed castle complexes from two distinct dynastic histories.
The four-towered Renaissance Schloss of the Mainz prince-electors at Aschaffenburg on the Main, built 1605-1614 by Georg Ridinger, destroyed 1944-1945, and rebuilt 1954-1964 as the eastern anchor of Bavaria’s prince-bishop residences.
The seat the Würzburg prince-bishops chose in 1719 in place of Marienberg Fortress, assembled by an international workshop under Balthasar Neumann and decorated by Tiepolo on the great vaulted ceilings. UNESCO World Heritage since 1981.
For 466 years, the prince-bishops of Würzburg ruled their city from the wrong side of the Main. From the wooded hill above the river’s left bank, the Festung Marienberg watched, weighed, and occasionally sent troops down the slope. The cathedral, the markets, and the burghers’ houses all stood across the water. Power lived on the…