The castles of the German and Austrian Alps are known for their fairy-tale quality. The iconic turreted silhouette in the background of the Disney logo was, in fact, modeled after Neuschwanstein, King Ludwig II’s Bavarian palace near the border of the two countries. Schloss Fuschl, located on an evergreen-ringed, emerald-hued glacial lake 20 minutes outside of Salzburg, is no exception. Constructed in 1461, the sprawling stone manse served for four centuries as a luxurious hunting lodge for the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg, who ruled the area under the Holy Roman Empire, as well as their royal guests. After World War II, the schloss (“castle” in German) was converted into a hotel that operated mostly seasonally, from April through October, until 2022, when Rosewood Hotels & Resorts bought the property and embarked on a restoration. On July 1, Schloss Fuschl will reopen with 98 guest rooms including six stand-alone chalets. There are six restaurants and bars on-site; indoor and outdoor infinity pools; a spa with three saunas and eight treatment rooms; and access to Lake Fuschl: Fishing expeditions, boat trips and herbalist-led nature walks can be arranged. While the schloss was never home to the likes of Cinderella or Rapunzel, it did host a movie princess: Fans of midcentury cinema might recognize the place from the German-French actress Romy Schneider’s “Sisi” films — a historical trilogy about the young Elisabeth of Austria — which were shot there in the 1950s. Today, the Sisi Teesalon bears the character’s name and will offer afternoon tea service with a wide range of homemade pastries including the Schloss Fuschl Torte, a chocolate-hazelnut truffle cake first created in the house kitchen more than 30 years ago. Rates from about $695
Franz Kafka’s Prague: a centenary tour of the writer’s home city
03.06.2024 - 12:45 / theguardian.com
It’s a boiling summer’s day in Prague and I’m staring into the austere face of Franz Kafka. Not the real Kafka, of course – he died exactly a century ago, which is why I’m here – but a cast-iron plaque on the wall of his birthplace. The house, a replica as it turns out, sits pretty much on Old Town Square, which as usual is thronged with tourists snapping pics of its fairytale architecture, sipping drinks on terraces and gawking at its 15th-century astronomical clock. It’s impossible to imagine Kafka – 6ft tall and skinny, with dark, intense eyes – in this vibrant, carefree milieu. But then the Prague that Kafka was born into, in 1883 – the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire – was a very different city. And Kafka himself, alienated both as a Jew and a minority German speaker, had a sensitive imagination that interpreted the city’s narrow, winding streets as claustrophobic and its looming spires as threatening.
I’m here on the Kafka trail because the city is celebrating the centenary of the author’s death throughout 2024, with events, lectures, exhibitions, tours and more. There’s a forthcoming biopic, Franz, being made here too, by Polish director Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa, Green Border), starring German actor Idan Weiss as the enigmatic author. Local artist David Černý’s famous 11-metre kinetic sculpture, Head of Franz Kafka, outside the Quadrio shopping centre, has also been refurbished for the occasion.
It’s intriguing to think that so much of Kafka’s existence played out around the Old Town Square, as well as the adjacent Jewish Quarter; as he once commented to his Hebrew teacher while gesturing at the square from an upper window of one of his family homes, “… this narrow circle encompasses my entire life”. He wasn’t kidding.
A brisk three-minute stroll and I’m standing in front of another of his abodes, the Minute House (Staroměstské náměstí 2), a Renaissance-era construction characterised by distinctive sgraffito decoration. Kafka was about six when his family moved here, and his three sisters (Gabrielle, Valerie and Ottilie) were born in the house. Not far away are the landmark gothic spires of the Church of Our Lady before Týn: young Franz had to walk past it to get to his first school, which was just the other side, on a street now known as Masná. The journey looks unthreatening enough today, especially now the city has clamped down on drunken stag parties, but for the anxious young Franz, the daily trip was a terrifying ordeal. Constantly afraid of getting lost, he later recalled in his Letters to Milena (Jesenská) how he would pull on his nanny’s skirt and grab the guard stones of houses on the way.
To the left of the church is the Goltz-Kinsky
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