The story of this place
The great sandstone castle above Heidelberg grew over centuries as the seat of the Electors Palatine, its Renaissance facades among the finest north of the Alps. In the Nine Years' War, Louis XIV's troops sacked and burned it in 1689 and again in 1693, blowing up its towers with mines. One massive round tower, the Krautturm, split cleanly in two, a whole wall crashing intact into the moat where it still lies. Lightning finished the ruin in 1764. Rather than rebuild, the Romantics of the 19th century made the picturesque ruin a shrine of German feeling, celebrated by poets and Mark Twain. Its cellar holds the Great Tun, a wine barrel holding 220,000 litres.