Where is that?

August 4, 2007 1:50 PM

What is this building? Castle, palace or maybe even a hotel, possibly on the Rhine or Danube.

It's on the cover of a Viking brochure I received and unlike every other photo inside, this one isn't identified!

posted by Rash to travel & transportation (12 comments total)

Ooop -- Viking Cruise link, repaired.
posted by Rash at 1:51 PM on August 4, 2007

This is so funny - I just called Viking (it was making me crazy), and they told me:

- They've sent over five requests to marketing this week alone to find out, because no one there recognizes it either

- The guy I spoke to has been on two of the Europe cruises himself, and doesn't remember it from either of them

And last but not least - the marketing department sometimes doctors the building location - the example the rep mentioned was the "Melk Abbey" - it's actually about a mile back from the river, but the photo showed it right on the river. Basically, if you see a building that looks like it, but the location looks wrong, it's probably the right one.
posted by Liosliath at 2:58 PM on August 4, 2007

Well my first thought when I pulled up the PDF brochure was "there are crescents on the spires, so it's possibly in a muslim-populated country."

My second thought was "there's a phone number on this brochure."
So I called them.
The lady I spoke to didn't know, but said she was positive that it was either in Austria or Germany, and on the Danube.

(on preview, seems like Liosliath and I had the same idea.)
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 3:04 PM on August 4, 2007

Well, it could be a heavily modified picture of Frederiksborg Castle, it's very similar. Or it could be some other random Renaissance castle in roughly the same area, I'll keep looking.
posted by anaelith at 3:07 PM on August 4, 2007

Found this at allposters.com. The text says it's the Johannisburg Castle in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. Here's another view, all the way at the bottom of the page.
posted by ormondsacker at 3:09 PM on August 4, 2007

(And it's on the Main, not the Danube.)
posted by ormondsacker at 3:11 PM on August 4, 2007

Wow, AskMe does it again! Are those really crescents on the spires? I can't tell, even when I blow it up a little.
posted by Liosliath at 3:14 PM on August 4, 2007

Hm, from this pic, I don't think they are - looks like little flags.
posted by Liosliath at 3:17 PM on August 4, 2007

No, don't seem to be. If you can view 3-D models via Google Earth or SketchUp, you can have a closer look.
posted by ormondsacker at 3:24 PM on August 4, 2007

And, of course, the Wikipedia pages: Schloss Johannisburg and Aschaffenburg.
posted by mto at 5:52 PM on August 4, 2007

looks like I was all kinds of wrong,
and so was the lady I called.
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 12:07 AM on August 5, 2007

Schloss Johannisburg it is, in Aschaffenburg, thanks all. For the sake of completeness, some info from that city's wiki -- the Schloss was built (1605-1614) by Archbishop Schweikard von Kronberg, and was damaged by allied area bombing during the war.
posted by Rash at 3:22 PM on August 5, 2007