Neuschwanstein Castle 2 - Mad King Ludwig

The horse drawn carriage lines were extremely long and the shuttles were not running - so it was a nice steep walk up from the valley to get to the entrance of Neuschwanstein  - But one of the finalist for the Man Made Wonders of the World could not be missed!

The castle is huge - once you actually enter through the gate.

View entering through the gate

Once through the gate - there is a staging area as you wait for your tour

An unfinished masterpiece - with bare brick rooms to this day

Neuschwanstein Castle was never finished. Construction began in around 1869, but the project was slow-moving from the start - it was originally planned to take just three years until it Ludwig could move in, but this quickly slipped to ten, then 14, then 16....
In addition, by the late 1800s, King Ludwig's castle-building projects were also running into phenomenal debt, accounting for a personal debt, in 1885, of around 14m marks. King Ludwig, however, was too stubborn (or too mad) to acknowledge these financial difficulties.

The staggering view across the Alps from the inside of Neuschwanstein. Credit: Stan Hua, CC-BY-2.0.

In addition to these problems, the castle had been designed a shrine to Wagner - and a grand location for concerts of his works. Wagner died, however, in 1883, never having set foot in the site, much to the dismay of a heartbroken King Ludwig.
In 1886, King Ludwig was declared insane.
Whether or not he was truly mad is an issue for debate: it suited his court to try and depose him on grounds of mental health. After his diagnosis, he was forced to leave the castle, and, three days later, he died in extremely suspicious circumstances.
When he died in 1886, King Ludwig would only have ever seen Neuschwanstein as a building-site.
Of the 200+ planned rooms, only 14 were finished (and much of the castle remains incomplete to this day - the second-floor rooms are inaccessible to the public because they're just bare brick).
Most notably, a huge Keep was planned for the centre of the site, but, for reasons of time and finances, it has never been completed. Its foundations can still be sighted today within the castle's Upper Courtyard.

The internal courtyard of Neuschwanstein looks like something from Disney. Note the stylised paintings of knights and dragons between the two turrets. Credit: Leo Seta, CC-BY-2.0.

Partially because of the vast debts incurred, just weeks after King Ludwig's death, his family opened the castle to tourists.
Building-work to complete the remainder of the exterior continued as these first tourists flocked in, and, since that time, Neuschwanstein has blossomed on the world stage as a major tourist attraction.