In Colditz country: the castles of Saxony, eastern Germany are historic, spectacular and remarkably free of visitors
- Soaring vaulted roofs, pointed towers, forbidding walls – the castles of Saxony were a mix of country residences, pleasure palaces and seats of power
- Colditz is the best known, as a former World War II jail, but others are full of stories – about Saxon kings such as Frederick the Belligerent – and surprises
Not even the thick walls of the 15th-century Schloss Wurzen can keep out the morning birdsong, which seems particularly loud in this quiet corner of Saxony, near Leipzig in eastern Germany. It acts as a call to an early breakfast in the dining room of the castle turned hotel.
Its twin-towered, moated bulk seems more suited to a robber baron than to the bishop for whom it was built, but today it is an appropriate base from which to reach other castles dotting the high points of this quiet corner of Germany close to the Czech and Polish borders – little visited yet architecturally spectacular and full of surprises.
The receptionist is amused when I ask what time I should set off to avoid the traffic. It really doesn’t matter, he says, and indeed the winding country roads to Barockschloss Delitzsch, half an hour northwest, through fields of neon-yellow rape and steep-roofed Saxon villages, have only light traffic.
When, across the dry moat, the heavy wooden doors beneath a carved and painted stone arch swing open, I am the only waiting visitor.
The castle retains a striking, medieval, onion-domed tower but is otherwise a substantial late-17th country house, once home for widows of Saxon monarchs such as Christiana of Saxe-Merseburg (1634-1701), who long survived a prince 19 years her senior.
Her focus was inward, her prayer chamber bigger then her bedroom, but she did not live without comforts, including a lace-trimmed four-poster bed, tapestried wallpaper, and Delft chinoiserie in niches over a vast fireplace. It is all grand, yet very human.
