He was twenty-three, and he never really came back down. Ludwig became king at eighteen, lost his only war at twenty, and then more or less withdrew from governing altogether to build. Not palaces to live in — stage sets to live inside. He hired theatre designers instead of architects. He had a grotto dug into a hillside and lit it with one of the first electrical installations in Bavaria so the colours could change. He slept through the day and rode out in a gilded sleigh at night. It bankrupted him personally, his ministers removed him for it, and within twenty-four hours he was dead in the shallows of Lake Starnberg alongside the doctor who had certified him. The verdict was suicide. The autopsy found no water in his lungs.
The numbersWhat you are actually going to see
- Neuschwanstein — the one on the crag, the one Disney borrowed. Ludwig lived in it for 172 days. It was never finished.
- Linderhof — the only one he completed, and the only one he really lived in. Small, gilded, and strange.
- Herrenchiemsee — a copy of Versailles, on an island, built by a man who had visited Versailles once.
- The Christmas markets — Munich’s run 20 November to 24 December; Nuremberg’s is the famous one and it is two hours north by train.
- One stop from Edmonton — YEG to Munich via Toronto or Frankfurt. No awkward routing.
- Snow on those towers is a late-November thing — go in October and you get autumn colour instead, which is beautiful and is not the photograph you came for.