| Photo Information |
| Copyright: Swarup K Mohanty (ninu70) (35) |
| Genre: Places |
| Medium: Color |
| Date Taken: 2008-06-18 |
| Categories: Architecture |
| Exposure: f/3.5, 1/60 seconds |
| More Photo Info: [view] |
| Photo Version: Original Version |
| Date Submitted: 2008-07-22 0:47 |
| Viewed: 135 |
| Points: 0 |
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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
Recently I was in Germany and I visited this amazing palace in Heildelberg.As I crossed the palace and came to it's garden ..from the top, you can see this huge barricade to stop the intruders to get into during ancient times.A casual look at it may give an impression of a huge tree-log..however the passage would give you later an understanding of a barricade.It is a ruined master peice and reminded me of the famous Arabian nights story of Alibaba, the forty thieves and the magic passage(sem-sem) in a Mountain. Let me tell you about this castle...
The castle ruins are among the most important Renaissance structures north of the Alps.
The castle has only been partially rebuilt since its demolition in the 17th & 18th centuries. It is located 80 m (262 ft) up the northern part of the Königstuhl hillside, and thereby dominates the view of the old downtown. It is served by an intermediate station on the Heidelberger Bergbahn funicular railway that runs from Heidelberg's Kornmarkt to the summit of the Königstuhl.
The earliest castle structure was built before AD 1214 and later expanded into 2 castles circa 1294; however, in 1537, a lightning-bolt destroyed the upper castle. The present structures had been expanded by 1650, before damage by later wars and fires. In 1764, another lightning-bolt destroyed some rebuilt sections.
Heidelberg was first mentioned in 1196 as Heidelberch. In 1155 Conrad of Hohenstaufen was made the Count Palatine by his half-brother Frederick Barbarossa, and the region became known as the Palatinate.[1] The claim that Conrad's main residence was on the Schlossberg (Castle Hill), known as the Jettenbühl, cannot be substantiated. The name Jettenbühl comes from the soothsayer Jetta, who was said to have lived there. She is also associated with the Wolfsbrunnen (Wolf's Spring) and the Heidenloch (Heathens' Well). The first mention of a castle in Heidelberg ("castrum in Heidelberg cum burgo ipsius castri") is in 1214, when Ludwig I received it from Bishop Heinrich von Worms. The last mention of a single castle is in 1294. In another document from 1303, two castles are mentioned for the first time
The upper castle on the Kleiner Gaisberg Mountain, near today's Molkenkur (destroyed in 1537);
The lower castle on the Jettenbühl (the present castle site).
All that is known about the founding of the lower castle is that it must have taken place between 1294 and 1303.
The oldest documents that mention Heidelberg Castle are:
The Thesaurus Pictuarum of the Palatinate church counsel Markus zum Lamb (1559 to 1606);
The "Annales Academici Heidelbergenses" by the Heidelberg librarian and professor Pithopoeus (started in 1587);
The "Originum Palatinarum Commentarius" by Marquard Freher (1599);
The "Teutsche Reyssebuch" by Martin Zeiller (Strasbourg 1632, reprinted in 1674 as the „Itinerarium Germaniae“).
The castle as it appears in the Thesaurus Pictuarum, circa 16th c.
The castle and town by Matthäus Merian, (highlight)All of these works are for the most part superficial and do not contain anything of importance. The case is different with Merian's Topographia Palatinatus Rheni from 1615, which describes Prince Elector Ludwig V as the person who „started building a new castle one hundred and more years ago“. Most of the descriptions of the castle up until the 18th century are based on Merian's information. Attempts to find an earlier year of the castle's foundation uncovered that under Ruprecht I, the famous court chapel had been erected on the Jettenbühl.
On a visit to Heidelberg in 1838, the French poet Victor Hugo took particular pleasure in strolling among the ruins of the castle. He summarised its history in this letter:
But let me talk of its castle. (This is absolutely essential, and I should actually have begun with it.) What times it has been through! Five hundred years long it has been victim to everything that has shaken Europe, and now it has collapsed under its weight. That is because this Heidelberg Castle, the residence of the counts Palatine, who were answerable only to kings, emperors, and popes, and was of too much significance to bend to their whims, but couldn't raise his head without coming into conflict with them, and that is because, in my opinion, that the Heidelberg Castle has always taken up some position of opposition towards the powerful. Circa 1300, the time of its founding, it starts with a Thebes analogy; in Count Rudolf and Emperor Ludwig, these degenerate brothers, it has its Eteocles and its Polynices [warring sons of Oedipus]. Then the prince elector begins to grow in power. In 1400 the Palatine Ruprecht II, supported by three Rhenish prince electors, deposes Emperor Wenceslaus and usurps his position; 120 years later in 1519, Count Palatine Frederick II was to create the young King Charles I of Spain Emperor Charles V.
source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberg_Castle |
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