The Fairytale Castles of King Ludwig II with Dan Cruickshank

Bavaria.

The soul of Germany.

Its romance, its culture, its sense of history...

..even its food and drink, define the image of the nation.

And much of it is down to the legacy of one man.

Ludwig II of Bavaria is a legendary figure.

The handsome boy-king, loved by his people,

betrayed by his ministers and found dead in mysterious circumstances.

A monarch obsessed by beauty

and heroic legend...

..who sacrificed everything for his art.

Even today, his castles and palaces are the most fantastical

examples of Romantic architecture anywhere in the world.

Nowhere have history, illusion, artifice

and reality combined to create such visually powerful buildings.

And all of them are windows into the soul

of their extraordinary creator...

..Ludwig II, the dream king.

Our story begins here, in the mountains of Southern Bavaria.

Hohenschwangau Castle sits high above Lake Alpsee.

It was here that the young Prince Ludwig grew up.

An enchanted landscape,

providing the perfect backdrop for a flourish of Gothic fantasy.

For Ludwig, a shy child with a vivid imagination,

the castle represented a wonderful refuge,

escape from the conventions and bustle

of court life in Munich.

It, and this wonderful landscape, captivated his imagination,

ignited an obsession for the past and, in many ways,

defined his life and the fate of his kingdom.

Ludwig's father, Maximilian, had built the castle in the 1830s,

on the site of a medieval ruin.

He spent much of the year here with his Prussian-born wife, Marie,

and his two young sons, Ludwig and Otto.

Ludwig was a dreamy child.

He loved stories and art, dressing up and make-believe.

For most children, this is an obsession

that begins and ends at the dressing-up box.

But for Ludwig, it was his whole world.

Ludwig's father decorated the walls of the castle

with scenes of ancient chivalry and combat.

It was a very particular vision of German legend.

Maximilian called this his Hall Of Heroes.

These are scenes that Ludwig grew up with,

highly romanticised images of medieval life -

knights, castles, chivalry.

Every room in this castle fed his imagination.

You can see here, the seeds of his later obsessions.

But romantic though they are, the paintings at Hohenschwangau

carried an important political message.

In the mid-19th century, there was no single German nation,

just a group of princely states and dukedoms.

Two of the largest were Prussia and Bavaria.

Though independent, these states had a shared culture and language

and there was a growing mood among their people for unification.

But which princely state would determine

the nature of the new Germany?

The castle curator understands the message of Hohenschwangau

better than most.

It's a hymn to Bavaria's artistic dominance.

Bavaria was really the cultural heart of Germany,

so Maximilian saw it this way, the Bavarians saw it this way.

They had their history over centuries.

And that's why Maximilian wanted to show his history,

the history of Bavaria, of his family.

He wanted to have kind of picture book, a history picture book.

He was very interested to teach his people here.

So the paintings tell historical stories about Bavaria,

about the family, about its great history as rulers in this area.

Also, there are myths and legends.

After centuries, where all these myths were forgotten,

they were collecting them again.

Well, that's the Brothers Grimm, of course,

who are involved in this creation of this interior scheme.

And the Brothers Grimm and some others were very involved,

they were searching for the myths of the old Germans,

they were collecting these sagas and fairy tales,

so this was a renaissance of German identity.

One room more than any other would captivate the young Ludwig.

This is the Hall Of The Swan Knight. It tells the story of Lohengrin.

Now, according to legend, Lohengrin, a Grail knight, left his family,

shown in this painting here,

and stepped into a small craft pulled by a single white swan

and then was taken away to save a damsel in distress.

For Ludwig's father, the greatest heroes of the past

were the Knights Of Schwangau,

literally translating as the Knights Of The Swan.

The swan appears again and again throughout the castle

and, as a symbol of the idyllic hero,

was the creature that Ludwig came to identify with strongly.

He began to imagine that when he grew up, he would be the Swan King,

the Lohengrin character of legend made monarch.

The scale and imagery of Hohenschwangau is extraordinary.

But it would be nothing compared to the heights

to which the adult Ludwig would go.

On March 10, 1864, Ludwig became King of Bavaria.

He was crowned at the Royal Palace

in the heart of the Bavarian capital, Munich.

He was just 18 years old, a shy young man

and not greatly interested in affairs of state.

He was much more interested in the things that happened

in the magnificent building

just a stone's throw from the royal residence.

It was a place where he could lose himself

in the stories and legends he adored.

Munich's theatre and opera house was, to Ludwig,

a spectacular place of magic and escapism.

Here he saw that heroic architecture could be evoked

through operatic stage sets.

Artifice would be the means to conjure up

the power of German myth and legend as the epic scale demanded.

The man who would take opera

to new Romantic heights in the 19th century was Richard Wagner.

And Ludwig had been following the great composer even as a boy.

On February 2, 1861, three years before he became king,

Ludwig attended a performance here in the Munich State Theatre

of Wagner's Lohengrin.

Now, at that point, Ludwig was 15 years old

and familiar with Wagner's writing about art and politics,

but his experience that night, in this theatre,

transformed admiration

into something akin to religious devotion.

One of Ludwig's first actions on becoming king

was to invite Wagner to dinner.

Wagner was 50 years old. Ludwig was 18.

It was an extraordinary relationship -

the gauche boy-king and the operatic revolutionary.

But they shared a love of excess and a world built on a heroic scale

and, of course, an obsession with Germanic legend.

For Ludwig, Wagner's operas are magical experiences, revelations,

they transported him into worlds of beauty, myth, legend and romance.

Soon, he started to command his own private performances,

so that he could hear the music in solitude,

but eventually not even that was enough.

He built his own Wagnerian stage sets.

Neuschwanstein, Ludwig's remarkable attempt to realise

the operas of Richard Wagner in masonry and mortar.

In a commanding position, high above a ravine,

this was to be the castle of Lohengrin, the Swan Knight,

and a powerful statement of Ludwig's position -

a king with a mythological status,

part of the pantheon of strong Germanic kings of legend.

It's an extraordinary Romanesque and Gothic vision

of a medieval knight's castle.

The image is taken straight from German legend.

The impression is of a fairy-tale castle,

perched on top of an impossible mountain.

Neuschwanstein is a stunning feat of engineering.

Work began in 1869 and continued for almost two decades,

at times employing between 200 and 300 workers per day.

It drew artists, craftsmen and artisans from much of Europe.

The result is pure architectural theatre.

This courtyard is based on Wagner's instructions

for a stage set for his opera, Lohengrin.

Ludwig took his architectural inspiration primarily,

and certainly for this castle,

from Wagner rather than from architectural precedent.

And when he needed detailed drawings,

he turned not to an architect, but to a set designer.

Christian Jank had worked with Wagner at the Court Theatre

on an early performance of Lohengrin.

From the start, Jank's drawings show an heroic vision.

Ludwig's fantasy, Wagner's fiction

and a heavy helping of Romantic Gothic.

In Ludwig's mind would be the Singers' Hall

that brought legend and reality together,

a medieval style feasting room

in which Wagner's operas could be sung...

..and a monument to the knights and kings of Germanic myth.

This could hardly be more theatrical.

This is like a backdrop on a stage at one end of the Singers' Hall.

Amazing. It shows the enchanted forest

surrounding the hiding place of the Holy Grail.

The legend of the Grail was

one of Ludwig's greatest inspirations in the castle.

It had everything - chivalric knights, religious significance

and untold power.

The Singers' Hall is Ludwig at his most heroic and optimistic.

But in private, there are parts of the castle

that don't quite fit this conventional Teutonic vision.

This is Ludwig's bedroom. Very ecclesiastical, richly monastic.

In front of me, his bed, which is amazing really.

It's like a Gothic shrine and a tremendously rich carved canopy.

A shrine or a tomb. Amazing really.

As Ludwig lay there,

he was presided over by a portrait of the Virgin Mary.

On the walls are scenes from the story that was very much

part of Germanic myth, the story, the legend

of Tristan and Isolde,

a strange story really for his bedroom

because it speaks of forbidden earthly love,

brought on by enchantment, a story that ends in tragic death,

but through death, there is redemption.

Ludwig never married

and his sexuality has long been the subject of speculation.

Throughout his life, he formed close bonds with numerous young men,

from actors to courtiers.

It seems almost certain that Ludwig was homosexual.

Seen in this light, the room begins to make sense.

As a devout Catholic monarch,

Ludwig's homosexuality filled him with remorse, shame and guilt,

and I suppose, therefore, one can see these paintings

as representing, for him, a cautionary tale,

a tale that told him that earthly love was out of bounds.

Also, I suppose, it could have suggested that, through death,

he would be redeemed.

Outside the bedroom, Ludwig seems to regain his confidence.

His throne room expresses Ludwig's desire to be an autocratic king,

ruling by God's will,

rather than the constrained, constitutional monarch that he was.

This really is the focus of the entire castle.

Not just the throne room, but a shrine to kingship

and a bold statement of Ludwig's belief

that kings rule by divine right.

It also reveals his view of himself as the king ruling by God's grace,

but also as a mediator between the world and God.

That explains the scheme of decoration of the room to a degree.

Here below me on the floor are images of plants, flowers,

animals, the world we inhabit.

Above, is a celestial dome of stars and a great sun, I suppose -

the heavens and sky.

God and the world of man, and between the two,

this great chandelier in the form of a regal crown,

representing, of course, the king's role between the world and God.

The mediator.

Yet this elaborate imagery was not a public statement.

Neither Ludwig's subjects

nor visiting dignitaries were allowed in.

This was an expression of visual beauty and of a kingly ideal

for the eyes of Ludwig and God alone.

So this seeming public statement

was only for Ludwig's private satisfaction.

Strange, but little here

is as straightforward or obvious as it might seem.

Above the throne room

lies the structural reality behind the theatre set.

This castle is all about appearances.

Here, history is only skin deep.

Clearly, Ludwig didn't care too much

about authentic medieval construction

because, behind the veneer of Romanesque detail and stone,

is this utterly modern, utilitarian, almost industrial world,

because this in front of me is the dome above the throne room.

Incredible. There is the central dome of the throne room

and you can see it is supported by, I suppose,

wrought-iron lattice sort of ribs

and they hold up the dome itself, which appears to be made out of

some sort of concrete or lime mixture, entirely modern.

So, an incredible world, isn't it? Below, ancient beauty.

Up here, modern industrial construction.

The relationship between engineering and artifice is an effective one.

Likewise, the overall fantasy of Neuschwanstein was not entirely

disconnected from events outside its walls.

In 1866, Ludwig and Bavaria had suffered a bruising humiliation.

Ludwig, much against his will, had been obliged to pick sides

when two Germanic states, Austria and Prussia, came to blows.

Unfortunately, he backed the wrong horse.

Feeling more sympathy for

their southern neighbours and fellow Catholics,

the Bavarians had sided with Austria, but the conflict,

known as the Seven Weeks War, ended in a decisive Prussian victory.

Ludwig's image of himself had taken a blow.

Both his kingdom and his position had been fundamentally weakened.

Neuschwanstein was Ludwig's retort to reality,

a beacon for how things should be.

It would set him on a course.

Architecture would become his manifesto for a better future.

It would be a journey that would take Ludwig to ever greater heights

of visual beauty and excess.

Ludwig became increasingly reclusive as he spent

more and more of his time, money and energy on architecture.

If Neuschwanstein was a castle fit for a Swan King, what he needed,

he thought, was a country retreat, a royal villa,

and he knew just the place to build it.

Ludwig had inherited a small hunting lodge

just 15 miles into the mountains from Neuschwanstein.

He now turned his attention to transforming it into a royal palace,

a refuge deep in secluded woods,

and one that could scarcely be more dissimilar to Neuschwanstein.

This is Linderhof.

After Neuschwanstein, this palatial villa

comes as something of a surprise.

It's utterly different in architectural style and in scale.

Gone are the fairy-tale towers and the mock medieval detailing.

Instead, for this mini palace, Ludwig preferred to go for

the Baroque Classical manner of 18th-century France.

For Ludwig, this change in style was deliberate.

In the real world, he was a king constrained by his ministers

and by the military might of his Prussian neighbour.

But in his imagination,

he was the very embodiment of the all-powerful monarch,

a king ruling by divine right.

And one historical figure more than any other

symbolised this ideal for Ludwig.

The entrance vestibule. Solid grandeur.

Lovely marble, Doric columns and...

Well, now, there can be no doubt about

who's the inspiration behind this creation because here,

confronting all who arrive, is an equestrian statue

of the French king, Louis XIV, the epitome of the absolute monarch.

A lovely piece of work.

And here, on the ceiling above,

is a great sunburst of the Sun King with, in the middle,

the Bourbon motto - "Nec pluribus impar," none his equal.

Of course, the motto of the Sun King, Louis,

but also the motto by which Ludwig would like to be known.

As Prussia dominated the Germanic world

and Bavaria's power waned, Ludwig's architecture became

the one place he could create the world as he thought it should be.

A world that respected the power of absolute monarchy,

the world of Louis XIV.

What an astonishing room.

An incredible evocation of the grandeur and opulence

of early 18th-century France.

This is the king's bedroom, there is the king's bed,

separated from the world of mere mortals by this balustrade.

Raised, as if on an altar,

is the divine bed of the incredible divine king.

Incredible sanctified territory.

Here, Ludwig would have presided in solitary grandeur.

Almost every room in this building

speaks of power and kingship through beauty.

But they do so on a surprisingly small scale.

This is Ludwig's world in miniature,

a private set of rooms decorated to mind-boggling intensity.

This is the most visually dramatic room in the palace.

Standing here between these two mirrors,

I can see an endless vista of rooms stretching to infinity.

It's incredible.

Ludwig would come into this mirror room to read alone at night.

It's strange, this mirrored room offers a window into Ludwig's soul.

You can imagine him standing here looking into these mirrors,

seeing himself in a vast and stately palace, but in fact,

it's nothing but a tiny room, all just a figment of his imagination.

Each room in this mini palace

is stuffed full of priceless works of art.

Sevres porcelain urns.

Even Sevres porcelain peacocks.

Meissen candelabra and sconces.

Lobmeyr crystal chandeliers.

Under the patronage of Ludwig,

there was a blossoming of the arts in Bavaria.

Munich came second only to Paris and Vienna

as a centre of artistic excellence.

And Ludwig was a man possessed. Every detail was agonised over,

every element personally overseen by the obsessive monarch,

inside and out.

The gardens became Ludwig's playground,

where he achieved glorious and instant gratification

through the construction of buildings

that were little more than stage sets.

Inside this mound is Ludwig's response to the Venus grotto

in Wagner's opera, Tannhauser.

Now, I shall enter through this rocky crevice here in front of me

and, strangely, I see the way is blocked by a vast stone,

which is clearly a door.

It will be heavy, I expect.

Rather impressive.

-Ah!

-HE LAUGHS

No, it's made of plaster. As with so much of Ludwig's world,

all is pure artifice.

The entire grotto is man-made, a framework of iron girders

skilfully covered with canvas and plaster and sculpted to give

the impression of a natural grotto, complete with stalactites.

This grotto is truly amazing.

It's so much bigger than you would think from the outside

and like so many of Ludwig's creations,

both eccentric and breathtaking.

It is ultimate theatre.

What an evocation!

And here, look, incredible. Here is the world of Wagner's Tannhauser.

Here is the lake and there, on the back wall,

indeed, is a painted scene from the opera, showing Venus in her grotto.

There is the design, here is the reality in three dimensions,

created by Ludwig for his pleasure and escape and fantasy.

The lake here and the craft, the sort of shell craft,

the boat from the opera.

He rowed around the lake in that.

You can imagine him sitting in it, fantasising, escaping,

in this incredible world he's created,

a world of pure imagination and artifice.

The theatricality of the grotto was enhanced

by the use of pioneering technology.

Dynamos were installed to power lights

with rotating coloured glass disks,

which created a changing light show for the king.

Ludwig embraced stage design

and new technology at every turn in the pursuit of the perfect illusion.

Not far from the Venus grotto

is something perhaps even more surprising.

This extraordinary site really is

one of the great moments in architecture,

the wonderfully incongruous juxtaposition of this gilded

Islamic dome set against the craggy backdrop of the Bavarian Alps.

The Moorish Kiosk was built for the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867.

Ludwig saw it and had to have it.

He bought the entire structure

and had it rebuilt in the grounds at Linderhof.

A richly decorated interior that transported Ludwig

from the Bavarian Alps to the exotic kingdoms of the Arab world.

The focus of the kiosk is the peacock throne,

a magnificent affair.

There we have the peacock presiding over the sofa

on which Ludwig would have sat.

He had the peacock made in Paris and Munich in 1877.

Made of metal,

the feathers are enamelled metal with polished stone.

The peacock, to him, represented eternity,

the continuation of this state of bliss.

It really is a most bold statement

of power, or imagined power, through beauty.

These buildings in the garden are pure fantasy.

Escapism of the most visceral kind.

There are places in which Ludwig could for a while retreat

from the woes and horrors of the real world.

As he said to a contemporary, "Oh, it is essential to create

"such paradises, such poetical sanctuaries

"where one can forget for a while the dreadful age in which we live."

As the events of that dreadful age develop,

such sanctuaries became increasingly important to the King.

In 1870, Prussia went to war with France.

It was part of a strategy to unite the Germanic states

around a common enemy.

Ludwig had no option but to join the war on the Prussian side.

But he was all too well aware of the cost.

Defeat would be disastrous,

but so would Prussian victory.

For Ludwig, the situation was impossible.

Victory would confirm Prussia as the dominant state in a united Germany

and also confirm Bavaria as little more than a vassal

and as king, Ludwig as a puppet monarch.

Puppet king he would be.

With Prussian victory came an irresistible call

for the creation of a German Empire

but with Prussia at its head.

The dream of German unification would happen

but Ludwig would be sidelined.

Obliged to sign away Bavarian sovereignty to Prussia

in a document known as the Kaiserbrief.

On 18th January, 1871,

the Prussian King was crowned Kaiser or Emperor of Germany

in the famous Hall Of Mirrors at the Palace Of Versailles in France.

The palace of Louis XIV became the birthplace of the new German Reich.

It was a victory for German nationalism on a Wagnerian scale,

but one that made Ludwig and Bavaria subservient to the Prussian King.

Ludwig's response as ever would be architectural

and this time, more ambitious than ever before.

The Prussian King had defiled the greatest palace of Ludwig's hero, Louis XIV.

Now Ludwig would create that palace anew

on an island on Lake Chiemsee,

far from the intrusion and disappointment of real life.

Herrenchiemsee, Ludwig's very own Palace Of Versailles.

But it was built not with the bountiful riches

of a Bourbon monarch,

but at least in part with a secret annual stipend

paid to Ludwig by the Prussian Exchequer

after signing the Kaiserbrief,

the very document that had officially stripped Ludwig

of much of his regal power and status.

Goodness. What grandeur,

what opulence and dare I say, what sort of pretension, really,

because this staircase is based on the Ambassadors' Staircase

in Versailles, of course.

Same scale, same sort of plan.

Incredible decoration.

Apparently, walls of marble,

though I'm sure it's only a veneer.

What's amazing about this, of course, is that

as real power slipped from Ludwig's grip in the world,

he created bigger and grander buildings,

as if, of course, to compensate for the loss of the real thing.

Ludwig's architecture had begun by taking inspiration from the stage.

Now it had truly become little more THAN a stage.

Goodness.

This really is one of the oddest architectural experiences I've ever heard.

I've travelled to a remote island in southern Bavaria

and found myself in Versailles, in the world of Louis XIV.

Incredible. In detail, in scale

in spatial experience, it's Versailles, really.

This is the king's state bedroom.

But of course, not the bedroom of Louis XIV, but of Ludwig II,

the man obsessed by Louis.

Louis represented to Ludwig the idea of absolute monarchy.

This is his homage to Louis. Incredible.

There's Ludwig's bed, balustrade.

What amazing opulence.

It's extraordinary.

Um, what can one say? It's...

extreme, extreme in every way.

He's living in the shadow, in the whorl, of Louis XIV.

Louis is everywhere. His presence, you almost feel it.

And that's the thing. Louis was a great model for Ludwig

of the proper king, the king ruling by divine right,

the absolute monarch.

And indeed, one can see images of Louis there.

Above each of the four doors are scenes from court life

in Versailles, each featuring Louis going about his business,

dispensing power, giving audiences,

indeed, exuding that sort of power, that regal power,

which Ludwig did not have.

There is one key difference -

Louis XIV's palace functioned,

Ludwig's did not.

This is the council chamber,

but no historic council meetings took place here, no audiences.

Ludwig wouldn't allow them.

But of course, the palace of an absolute monarch

had to have an audience chamber and so here it is.

There is the throne on which Ludwig should have sat.

Behind it, staring down as if bestowing blessings,

is a portrait of Louis XIV.

But of course, it's all very sad

because he's looking down onto a chair

which was and remains perpetually empty.

It's all, really, very haunting.

But the focus of the palace is Ludwig's answer

to the very grandest room of Versailles,

the scene of the recent Prussian triumph

which had led to the eclipse of Ludwig's dreams and ambitions for Bavaria.

This is the visually most striking room in the palace, or is usually,

but as you can see, it's under repair.

It's based on the Hall Of Mirrors at Versailles.

Indeed, in many ways, it's a very exact replica.

This room must have had great meaning for Ludwig.

The Hall Of Mirrors at Versailles had been sullied

because it had been used by the Prussians as a location

in which to proclaim their king the new emperor of united Germany.

Ludwig's response was to build his own Hall Of Mirrors,

which at 98 metres is somewhat larger than the original.

He was, of course, making a point.

In this grand hall, Ludwig's pursuit of beauty reached a crescendo.

It is an almost exact reproduction

of the Hall Of Mirrors at Versailles.

Ludwig couldn't resist one or two ironical theatrical flourishes,

such as this image of Fame blowing her trumpet

but tumbling from the heights.

In the dining room, the table is today encased

in a protective glass box.

It's not for the sake of the table so much as what sits on it.

Look. Upon the table is, well, a bunch of flowers,

but they're not flowers in the usual sense,

they're made of porcelain, Meissen porcelain.

Absolutely fantastic.

Sitting in a Meissen porcelain urn.

Absolutely delicate, lifelike, beautiful.

You can almost see the dew upon the petals. Incredible stuff.

What's more amazing still is what hangs above the table. Look at that.

The largest Meissen porcelain chandelier ever made.

108 candles on it.

A thing of utter beauty.

Look at the colours, the way it glistens.

Little bunch of flowers

and I see birds sitting on the stems of the object.

Absolutely amazing. Now, Ludwig was a jealous monarch,

jealous when it came to beauty, to things he loved.

When this was made, he ordered the mould should be smashed

so no such chandelier could ever be made again.

This remains unique.

And here the dining table is small. Just seats four people, really.

So, clearly, if the King wanted to be left alone

to dine in reflective solitude,

perhaps joined only by characters from his imagination.

Also, a wishing table, as it's called,

descends into the floor. The pulley, so it can be laid, pulled up.

The King can sit there dining

and not be disturbed by servants coming and going.

As with so much of Ludwig's world, this is a brilliant conjuring trick.

Downstairs, Ludwig employed technology

and the lessons of theatre set design

to safeguard his solitude.

This is the mechanism that operates the wishing table.

Up there, it's a table

in that wonderful porcelain rococo dining room.

Below here, this utterly ruthless piece of late 19th-century

hi-tech engineering. Wonderful sort of lattice construction.

Wrought iron or maybe steal. And of course, this great wheel.

It's a winch to push this round. There are counterweights.

There's a ratchet over here.

And one would simply lower the table,

down it would come into this space here

and I suppose, if possible, one would put on the next course

and up it would go again.

So, typical of Ludwig, this contrast of worlds,

the world of beauty, history and solitude,

and down here, modern engineering

and I say a scurry of staff.

Active here, invisible to the King above.

As Ludwig retreated further into his own fantasy world,

he began to see himself not as a Sun King in Louis XIV's image,

but as the Moon King, a dark reflection of his hero.

Veronika Endlicher is a curator at Herrenchiemsee

and an authority on both the palace and its creator.

Ludwig inverts aspects of Louis the Sun King

because Ludwig sees himself as the Moon King, doesn't he?

SHE SPEAKS IN GERMAN

Of course, Ludwig is obsessed with beauty in architecture, in art,

but he himself becomes, in his view, anyway, less beautiful.

So this must be a big issue for him, a challenge.

Ludwig only stayed at this palace once.

Despite his grand plans, events overtook him

and the palace remains unfinished.

The result is rather spooky.

Beautifully ornate rooms lead into unfinished shells.

Walking between these spaces is like walking offstage

into the wings of a theatre.

This is the companion staircase to the one I walked up earlier.

That, of course, clad in marble,

a thing of great beauty expressing imperial power.

This, a hollow sham, really,

a grim reflection of reality.

This is all so symbolic.

Ludwig created this palace to express kingship,

but he was, in fact, a king who'd lost his kingdom

and the unfinished state of this staircase,

captures the absolute moment when the dream came to an end.

Ludwig's increasingly eccentric behaviour had not gone unnoticed

by his ministers.

He spent months at a time away from Munich.

He lived by night and had little or no interest

in public appearances or matters of state.

More importantly, he had run up enormous debts.

The cost of his building schemes had bankrupted Ludwig,

but he refused to curb his expenditure.

By 1885, the King was more than 14 million marks in debt,

3.5 billion euros in today's money.

The Cabinet, faced with a king who seem to have few interests

beyond his building projects and running up debts,

decided to act. It gathered facts and opinions from Ludwig's staff

and then consulted a team of psychiatrists.

Now, these psychiatrists without even interviewing Ludwig

concluded that His Majesty is in a far advanced state of insanity.

It was all his ministers needed to topple the monarch.

Just after midnight on 12th June, 1886,

a government commission placed the King in custody.

Ludwig's uncle was declared Prince Regent.

Ludwig was transferred to a castle

on the shores of Lake Starnberg near Munich

and placed under house arrest.

The Moon King had lost his kingdom

and perhaps more importantly, his beloved palaces.

He was, according to accounts,

bereft at the thought of the future.

The following day, Ludwig went for a walk

with his psychiatrist Dr Gudden along the banks of the nearby lake.

Neither man returned.

After hours of searching, the bodies of Ludwig and Dr Gudden were found

floating in shallow water on the edge of the lake.

Both had been dead for several hours.

The body of Ludwig showed no signs of obvious injury,

but the body of the doctor showed evidence of a violent struggle.

The King's final moments have been the subject of debate

and speculation ever since.

Did Ludwig attempt suicide, killing his psychiatrist

when he tried to intervene?

Was it a dreadful accident?

Or was the King murdered?

And if so, why? And by whom?

The truth is that Ludwig's last hours remain a mystery,

the final mystery of the man who had declared,

"I want to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others."

He had his wish.

Today, the site of his death is marked by this simple cross

standing in the lake.

This site remains a place of pilgrimage for Ludwig's admirers.

They gather here every year

on the anniversary of his death to mourn the lost king of Bavaria.

Bigger places of pilgrimage are the palaces themselves.

All were open to the public within six weeks of the King's death.

They've paid for themselves many times over.

Today, Neuschwanstein, the most famous of the palaces,

receives some 6,000 visitors a day in the summer months

and has received more than 50 million visitors

since it was opened to the public on 1st August, 1886.

King Ludwig himself has become a symbol of German pride,

more so today than ever he was in his lifetime.

For many, he represents the heart of Bavaria and the soul of Germany.

I'd be very interested to hear from a young person about King Ludwig.

What do you think? What do people now think of this rather tragic king?

He was kind of special, different,

because Bavaria is very, I would say, conservative

and he wasn't for his time.

I think he was a very modern man in his thinking

and that's because he was an outsider then, so as a consequence.

People thought, "Oh, God. What is he doing?

"He's spending so much money on art or architecture."

But I think people love him. Today, they love him for that.

For most people, the story of Ludwig ends at Lake Starnberg

and the wooden cross.

But for me, there's a more fitting memorial

to this visionary and eccentric king.

This is the Chapel Of Grace in the small town of Altotting,

some 60 miles from Munich,

one of the most visited shrines in the whole of Germany.

It is home to the much venerated Black Madonna,

a 14th-century icon of profound importance in Catholic Bavaria.

But it is also a shrine to Ludwig.

This beautifully-crafted silver-gold urn was made in 1886

by a jeweller that Ludwig used to decorate his palaces.

Outside is Ludwig's cipher,

two Ls entwined.

Inside is Ludwig's heart.

This is entirely in keeping with Bavarian tradition

because resting each side and above

are the hearts of other Bavarian monarchs.

It seems to me that is completely fitting

that a heart that beat for beauty,

the heart of a king that lived for art and architecture

should reside for eternity in an object so beguiling,

in a building so beautiful.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd