Heidelberg again was mostly a modern town with very little of the ‘old’ left – except for the houses on the outskirts and around the castle. Schloss Heidelberg overlooks the town and there has always been a castle and Royal Palace overlooking the town since the 1200’s. Over the next 500 years the castle was added-to and added-to and was a centre for renaissance culture and art, but in 1764 it was struck by lightening and extensively damaged.
Subsequently, the decision was made to forsake the castle, repurposing some of its bricks for other palaces. By the mid-1800s, efforts shifted towards preserving the remnants. The castle’s magnitude truly impressed me, especially the extensive terracing of the royal gardens, which must have required considerable effort and manpower to construct at such an elevation. The quality and craftsmanship of the brickwork were equally astonishing, especially considering this was all achieved long before the advent of machinery.
In the afternoon I also nipped over to France to have a look at one of the forts used in the Marginot Line. Fort Schoenenbourg was built in the 1930’s and the scale, as well as the sheer breadth of engineering for the tunnelling, the support and the weaponry is truly stunning. Alas, due to the changing nature of warfare it was obsolete once it was finished, but the scale of it is truly impressive. In the 1970’s a group of volunteers decided to restore the Fort, and they have done a superb job as it looks today just as it would have looked 90-odd years ago.
