 
On a cliff in the Alps, hikers Franziska Thurm, 10, at left in the photo, and her brother Stefan, 12, get a great view of Neuschwanstein (noy-SHWAN-shtine), a storybook castle near their home in Germany. King Ludwig II began to build the castle in 1869.
This shy ruler also designed other elaborate castles before dying under strange circumstances. Some said Ludwig was insane. Was he? Decide for yourself.
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| Citizens of southern Bavaria would wake at night to the clatter of hoofbeats. They weren't alarmed. They knew it was just their king on another midnight sleigh ride. King Ludwig II ruled Bavaria (now part of Germany) for 22 years, until 1886. He was just 18 when he became king. He found ruling to be dull and stressful. He was happier living in a fantasy world.
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Ludwig grew up in a 12th-century castle at Hohenschwangau (ho-hen-SHWAN-gow). As a boy, he was fascinated by legends of knights, the warriors of the medieval period (about A.D. 400–1600). In 1868, he began to build castles of his own. Over the next few years he started work on three castles, all in the foothills of the Alps in present-day Germany. Ludwig was planning two more castles when the German Empire conquered Bavaria. Ludwig remained king but had little power. He withdrew deeper into his dream world. He moved from one isolated home to another. And he took his nightly rides.
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Ludwig’s advisers got tired of his expensive, useless building projects. So they declared him insane. On June 12, 1886, his doctors locked him up at Neuschwanstein and moved him to Berg Castle. The next night his body was found floating in a lake. Today Ludwig’s "useless" castles are popular tourist attractions—especially the storybook fantasy castle at Neuschwanstein.
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Land of lakes, meadows, and storybook castles, Bavaria lies along the edge of the Alps in southeastern Germany.
by Margaret McKelway
Photographs by Richard T. Nowitz
Map by Martin Walz
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