Neuschwanstein Castle

Neuschwanstein was not designed by an architect but by a theatrical set designer, Christian Jank — which explains everything. King Ludwig II of Bavaria commissioned it in 1868 as a private retreat and a three-dimensional tribute to the operas of Richard Wagner, his idol and friend. Architects Eduard Riedel, Georg von Dollmann, and Julius Hofmann turned Jank's stage flats into white limestone reality: soaring turrets, Romanesque arches, and a Throne Hall modelled on a church nave, wrapped in frescoes of Germanic myth.

For all its medieval costume, the castle was a machine of the 1880s: running water, central heating, flushing toilets, telephones, and electric bells to summon servants. Yet of more than 200 planned rooms, only about 14 or 15 were ever finished — including the Singer's Hall and the King's bedroom, its woodwork carved into a Wagnerian fever dream. The Throne Hall, ironically, never received a throne.

Ludwig lived in his dream for only about 172 days before his mysterious death in 1886; he had spent barely 11 nights there. Seven weeks later the state opened it as a museum to pay off his debts, and the world's most famous unfinished building began its second life — some 1.4 million visitors a year, and the acknowledged model for Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty Castle.