Schloss Neuschwanstein is Germany's most famous. castle. Built in the Bavarian hillside in the late 1800s, it. was the inspiration for Walt Disney's castle.

The most famous German castle built in the 1800s is Neuschwanstein Castle (Schloss Neuschwanstein), with construction beginning in 1869 under King Ludwig II of Bavaria. It is a "Romanesque Revival" palace, not a medieval fortress, designed as a theatrical homage to the operas of Richard Wagner. Another prominent example is Hohenzollern Castle (Burg Hohenzollern), the ancestral seat of the Prussian Royal House; while there were older structures on the site, the current "fairytale" version was rebuilt between 1850 and 1867 by King Frederick William IV. In 2026, these "19th-century Historicist" castles are often mistaken by tourists for ancient strongholds, but they were actually built during the Romantic era when royals sought to recreate the "idealized" Middle Ages with then-modern luxuries like running water and central heating. Neuschwanstein, in particular, was recently recognized in a 2025 UNESCO session for its cultural significance as a masterpiece of 19th-century eclecticism, continuing to serve as the inspiration for Disney's Sleeping Beauty Castle.