The castle of Marienburg looks as if a Hollywood studio had been told to build the perfect German fairy-tale palace, and in a sense it was an act of devotion: King George V of Hanover, who was blind, had it built in the 1850s and 1860s as a birthday present for his wife, Queen Marie, on a forested hill above the Leine valley. The architect, Conrad Wilhelm Hase, packed it with towers, turrets, pointed windows and steep roofs in the neo-Gothic style, and the result is a skyline of such romantic excess that visitors often assume it is medieval.
The irony is that the royal family hardly enjoyed it. In 1866 Prussia annexed the Kingdom of Hanover, and George and Marie went into exile in Austria, so the castle spent much of its life as a symbol of a vanished kingdom. It stayed in the hands of the House of Hanover for generations, and for years the question of who owns what has caused a sharp family quarrel and a lot of legal paperwork.
The view from the road is the thing. You see the castle from the valley, across fields and meadows, with its towers rising above the trees, and the best photographs are taken in the soft light of early morning or in the low light of evening. The roads here, around Nordstemmen and Elze, are gentle and well surfaced, with long curves through farmland and a pleasant roll over low ridges. The nearby hills are part of the Leine uplands, where the river flows north towards Hannover.
Nordstemmen, a town of thirteen thousand, is the closest place for fuel and food, only two kilometres off, and Elze is a little further. Bakeries and cafés are plentiful. If you decide to go up to the castle, be prepared to walk the last stretch, and to share the path with coach parties in summer. Visiting hours are limited in winter, so check before you go. The photograph from the valley, though, is free, and available whenever the sun is out.