Heidelberg Castle: Travel Guide (4.7★)

A ruin that turns pink in the afternoon

Look up from the Old Bridge and the castle is already there. Its broken towers and roofless palaces sit halfway up the Königstuhl, built from the same red Neckar sandstone as the town below. In late-day light the stone goes from rust to rose.

This is a ruin that people kept on purpose. French troops wrecked it in the Nine Years’ War in the 1680s and 1690s, and lightning finished the job in 1764. Romantic-era painters and poets then made the broken walls famous. Mark Twain wrote about it in A Tramp Abroad, and it is still one of the most-visited sights in Germany.

Funicular or the cobbled climb

There are two ways up, and both start at Kornmarkt in the Altstadt.

• Bergbahn funicular: the lower station sits beside Kornmarkt. The ride to the Schloss stop is short, and the line carries on to Molkenkur and the Königstuhl summit if you want more height.
• On foot: the Burgweg climbs from Kornmarkt on steep cobbles. Allow 15–20 minutes and expect to stop for breath. The Neue Schlossstraße is a slightly gentler route.
• From the main station: bus 33 runs from Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof toward the Bergbahn and Rathaus stops by Kornmarkt.

Walking down is the easy half, so many visitors ride up and stroll back.

Inside the walls

You enter the castle courtyard through a cluster of buildings from different centuries. The Renaissance façade of the Ottheinrich Building is lined with carved statues. The Friedrich Building next to it has rows of Palatine rulers standing in niches. Much of the stonework is open to the sky, so you can see straight through window frames to the trees behind.

Inside the Ottheinrich Building, the German Pharmacy Museum (Deutsches Apotheken-Museum) holds old apothecary rooms, jars and distilling equipment. It is small and easy to walk through, and it rewards a slow look.

Downstairs is the Heidelberg Tun, the huge wine barrel the castle is known for. A wooden staircase takes you up onto its top. Opposite stands the figure of Perkeo, the court jester, who according to legend drank enormous amounts of the barrel’s wine.

The terrace, the gate and the split tower

The best views are outside the main courtyard. The Scheffel Terrace looks over the Altstadt rooftops, the Neckar and the arches of the Old Bridge. If you want the classic postcard shot, take it here.

On the way, look for these:

• Elisabeth Gate: a sandstone arch Friedrich V gave his wife, Elizabeth Stuart. Legend says it went up overnight.
• The blown-up tower: a huge slab of wall that broke off when French troops blasted the tower. It still lies where it fell in the moat.
• The garden terraces: what survives of the Hortus Palatinus, a 17th-century garden carved into the hillside.

Plan on two to three hours for the courtyard, the barrel, the museum and the terraces. Add an hour if you take the funicular up to the Königstuhl afterwards.

Beating the weekend crowd up the hill

On weekends, timing matters more than anything else. Saturdays and Sundays are calm only from 9am to 10am. From 11am to 6pm the courtyard, the barrel staircase and the funicular queue fill up. Weekdays stay quiet from 9am to 6pm, so a Monday-to-Friday visit gives you room at any hour.

The opening hours are the same every day, 9am to 6pm. On a weekend, be at Kornmarkt shortly before 9am. Ride up first, see the Tun and the courtyard while they are empty, and save the outdoor terraces for later, when the crowds are inside.

A few practical habits help:

• Tickets: the standard castle ticket has usually covered the funicular to the castle, the courtyard, the Tun and the Pharmacy Museum. Current inclusions and prices are listed on the official Schlösser und Gärten Baden-Württemberg site and at the ticket desks.
• Interior tours: the palace rooms are seen on guided tours, held in German and English. Ask for the next English tour time as soon as you arrive.
• Shoes: the courtyards are uneven cobbles and worn steps, which are slippery when wet.

Evenings and the town below

In summer, the castle is lit up with fireworks during the Heidelberger Schlossbeleuchtung, usually held a few times a year. The best views are from the riverbanks and the Old Bridge. Dates change each year, so check the city’s events calendar.

Back at the bottom, Kornmarkt leads straight into the Hauptstraße, one of Europe’s longest pedestrian streets. The Church of the Holy Spirit is a few minutes’ walk away, and so is the Old Bridge. Cross the Neckar and climb to the Philosophers’ Walk for a view back at the castle from across the valley.