User Reviews
Worth seeing in Feuchtwangen is the historic old town with its marketplace that is described as 'Franconia's ballroom'. Also worthy of note is the former Benedictine monastery church with its Romanesque cloister, in which the craftsmen's workshops are housed. Also, a fair amount of the town's old wall still stands, dating from about 1400. Of the town's original three gates, only one, the Upper Gate, is still maintained. The Lower Gate had to make way for traffic in the 19th century, and the Spitaltor, or Hospital Gate, fell down after a fire.
References:Střekov Castle (Schreckenstein) is perched atop a cliff above the River Elbe, near the city of Ústí nad Labem. It was built in 1316 for John of Luxembourg, the father of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, to guard an important trade route to Germany. After changing hands several times, the castle was acquired by the Lobkowicz family in 1563. Its strategic importance led to occupations by Imperial Habsburg, Saxon, and Swedish forces during the Thirty Years' War, as well as successive sieges by Austrian and Prussian armies during the Seven Years' War.
Although Střekov Castle was heavily damaged during those conflicts and abandoned as a military installation by the end of the 18th century, the 1800s saw many poets and artists visiting the castle, drawn by a new trend of interest in romantic ruins.