Placed high upon its "proud rock," the restored fabric to-day wonderfully resembles the castled-crag of one's imagination.
Archbishop Werner of Strasburg also made it his residence in turn, and later the English princess betrothed to the Emperor Frederick II. of the Hohenstaufen dynasty was entertained there.
The castle was nearly destroyed by the French in 1688, and in 1825 the ruin was made over to the then prince royal, afterward King of Prussia.
Within the reconstructed walls, topped with a series of crenelated battlements, after the true mediæval manner, one finds an ample courtyard, from which lead the entrances to the various parts of the vast fortress.
Innumerable apartments open out one from the other, all forming a great museum filled with all manner of curios and relics.
In a corner of one great room was long[{197}] kept (they may or may not be there yet; the writer does not know) the Austrian and Swiss standards taken in the Thirty Years' War.
There was also a cabinet containing the sabre of Murat, taken at Waterloo; the sabres of Blucher, of Poniatowski, and Sobieski; and[{198}] the swords of the Duc d'Albe and De Tilly; and, incongruously enough, a knife and fork said to have belonged to Andreas Hofer, the hero of the Tyrol.
In the chamber of the king is a magnificent piece of ecclesiastical furniture in the form of a processional cross said to date from the eighth century.
The fine Gothic chapel is decidedly the gem of the whole fabric and its accessories, and, though only finished in its completeness, during the present day, it is a master copy of the best style of the Gothic era.