Heidelberg Castle perches high on a rise above the Rhine. It has a long and tangled history involving the Electors Palatinate, the Reformation, and many Fredricks, Ludwigs, Heinriches, Gustavs, Karls, Leopolds, Williams, and Johanns.
Here’s a reconstruction of the castle around 1500:
The castle was partially demolished in a French siege in the late 1600s. The retreating French wedged explosives between the stones of the outer wall, but the fuses they used were too short. When the moat was excavated during a recent restoration, archaeologists discovered the bodies of twenty French soldiers buried beneath the rubble.
We can thank a lightning strike for the castle’s preservation—one of the Fredricks intended to move his court to Heidelberg and restore the castle in the 18th century, but he took the lightning as a sign from God and moved elsewhere.
And how does one burn a castle? Sandstone and roof tiles don’t burn, but wood interiors do—very slowly. The guide told us that Heidelberg Castle took four days to burn. I thought this statement had a lovely rhythm, and have set about writing a poem in the fine tradition of Victorian rhyming doggerel. Happily for you, the poem isn’t complete, so I can subject you to only a middle verse:
The valley slumbered down below:
No one saw the rafters catch.
The village greyhounds raised their heads
And bayed the burghers from their beds
To see reflected in the thatch
The castle ramparts glow.
