Wartburg

Why go

The Wartburg is a castle above Eisenach which, the Wartburg-Stiftung's World Heritage page says, was founded in 1067 according to legend and first documented in 1080. The same page says its Palas was built in the 12th century as a residential building, that in the high Middle Ages the castle was the residence of the Thuringian landgraves, that Saint Elisabeth lived there in the early 13th century and that Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German there in 1521/22. It links the castle to the Wartburg Festival of 1817, when five hundred students gathered there, and says Grand Duke Carl Alexander decided in 1838 to renew it, with new buildings by the architect Hugo von Ritgen completing it by 1890. The foundation's tours page says the interior can be visited daily either with a guide or individually, that day tickets are sold at the ticket office on site, and that timed tickets are also sold online in advance. UNESCO inscribed the castle on the World Heritage List in 1999, as the foundation's page notes.