Wartburg Castle
UNESCO World Heritage Site: Wartburg Castle (1999); The Hill Castle Where Luther Translated The New Testament Into German In 1521 And 1522, And Where The Minstrels' Contest And The 1817 Students' Festival Are Set · Eisenach, Thuringia
The Wartburg stands on a wooded ridge above Eisenach in western Thuringia, traditionally founded in 1067 and inscribed by UNESCO in 1999. Two things make it matter. Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia lived here in the early thirteenth century; and in 1521 and 1522 Martin Luther hid here under the name Knight George after the Diet of Worms and translated the New Testament into German in roughly eleven weeks, in a plain panelled room that is still the most visited space in the building. The Romanesque Palas at its core is genuinely twelfth-century and one of the best preserved secular buildings of its date north of the Alps. Much of the rest - the keep with its cross, the painted halls, the silhouette on every poster - is a nineteenth-century romantic reconstruction, and the romantic nationalism that built it is itself part of why the site is listed. The interiors are guided-tour only; the courtyard, the ramparts and the museum are not. The approach is a steep climb from the car park below.
On the ridge above Eisenach, western Thuringia, at the northern edge of the Thuringian Forest, Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany
Open daily year round, with long hours from roughly late March to early November and shorter ones in winter; the last guided tour of the interior leaves well before the gate closes, so arriving late in the afternoon can mean the courtyard only - confirm. Guided tours of the Luther room and the painted halls run at frequent intervals through the day in German, with fewer in English, and sell out at peak times. The museum and the courtyard keep roughly the same hours as the castle. The shuttle bus from the lower car park runs during opening hours in season. Reformation Day on 31 October and the summer weekends are the busiest days of the year.