Johannisburg Palace in Aschaffenburg

Sunday we woke up to something amazing...blue skies and no rain! We grabbed our cameras and headed out to find something to see and ended up deciding to visit Aschaffenburg and tour the castle there. The town sits right on the Main river and the castle is in the middle of town on a bluff overlooking the river, a perfect vantage point for sure. In medieval times the castle was a fortress but fires destroyed most of the original construction except for the keep which is still a part of the building today. It is a MASSIVE structure constructed to be the second residence of the electoral archbishops from Mainz. The archbishops of Mainz were VERY important in political and religious affairs. Wikipedia says that he would be the substitute of the Pope north of the Alps. This changed in 1803 when many parts of Germany became increasingly secularized. Unfortunately the Palace was severely damaged in WWII and had to be almost completely rebuilt. It is always very sobering when we visit these beautiful buildings here and discover photographs of their destruction in the war. It is hard to imagine the amount of money and work it took to rebuild so much history. Fortunately the people had the forsight to safely hide away the art and other treasures so they were not destroyed.




















Inside the palace we were able to see some of the Princely Apartments furnished as they would have been in the last 18th century. Other exhibits were the worlds largest collection of cork architectural models. They were interesting in both their scale and in the amount of detail. Most of the models were of Roman structures..and all out of cork!












Other parts of the museum had all sorts of porcelain and china articles, furniture, exhibits about industries in the town, weapons and this unusual carved sled that we were all fascinated with.










After we visited the palace we took a short walk through the gardens to a unique building called "the Pompeiinam" which was commissioned by King Ludwig I. It was to have been inspired by excavations in Pompeii and have the feel of a mediterranean villa for art lovers to come and see the masterpieces within. We weren't able to go inside because it had already closed...another day!