Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 5: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, Part 1 — John Shaqi
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 5: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, Part 1
History
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 5: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, Part 1
Austria -- Description and travel; Germany -- Description and travel; Switzerland -- Description and travel
We may now either go through the Himmels Thor to the left, or keeping
straight up under the old trees and passing the "Mount of Olives" on the
left, approach the large deep-roofed building between two towers. This
is the Kaiserstallung, as it is called, the Imperial stables, built
originally for a granary. The towers are the Luginsland (Look in the
land) on the east, and the Fünfeckiger Thurm, the Five-cornered tower,
at the west end (on the left hand as we thus face it). The Luginsland
was built by the townspeople in the hard winter of 1377. The mortar for
building it, tradition says, had to be mixed with salt, so that it might
be kept soft and be worked in spite of the severe cold. The chronicles
state that one could see right into the Burggraf's Castle from this
tower, and the town was therefore kept informed of any threatening
movements on his part.
To some extent that was very likely the object in view when the tower
was built, but chiefly it must have been intended, as its name
indicates, to afford a far look-out into the surrounding country. The
granary or Kaiserstallung, as it was called later, was erected in 1494,
and is referred to by Hans Behaim as lying between the Five-cornered and
the Luginsland Towers. Inside the former there is a museum of
curiosities (Hans Sachs' harp) and the famous collection of instruments
of torture and the Maiden (Eiserne Jungfrau). The open space adjoining
it commands a splendid view to the north. There, too, on the
parapet-wall, may be seen the hoof-marks of the horse of the
robber-king, Ekkelein von Gailingen. Here for a moment let us pause,
consider our position, and endeavor to make out from the conflicting
theories of the archeologists something of the original arrangement of
the castles and of the significance of the buildings and towers that yet
remain.
Stretching to the east of the rock on which the Castle stands is a wide
plain, now the scene of busy industrial enterprise, but in old days no
doubt a mere district of swamp and forest. Westward the rock rises by
three shelves to the summit. The entrance to the Castle, it is surmised,
was originally on the east side, at the foot of the lower plateau and
through a tower which no longer exists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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