Bavaria's fairy-tale palaces granted world heritage status
The decision, made by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee during its 47th session in Paris, is recognising the architectural and cultural significance of King Ludwig II's 19th-century palaces.
Construction began at Neuschwanstein in 1869, but the project was never completed, and building work halted when the Bavarian king died in 1886.
The castle is now one of the most popular tourist sites in Germany, receiving roughly 1.4 million visitors per year. It inspired the Disney castle logo after Walt Disney visited in the 1950s.
Bavarian state premier Markus Soeder described the designation as a "worldwide accolade," calling Neuschwanstein "Bavaria's landmark par excellence."
"For our fairy-tale castles, a fairy tale comes true," he said in a statement.
Neuschwanstein combined great art and culture and also a bit of "kitsch and cliché," he said.
"When seeing the castle, some people worldwide may think of Disney - but no: Neuschwanstein is and remains the original from Bavaria."
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The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
The retro model theme park that was like a ‘mini wonderland' – here's what it was like to visit as a child
A FORMER amusement park in Bournemouth used to be home to "Europe's largest model landscape" with Big Ben and a mechanical Tower Bridge. The model village of Tucktonia opened back in 1976 and included an array of different landmarks such as Admiralty Arch, Hadrian's Wall and Stonehenge. 6 6 6 Some of the models even moved, including Tower Bridge, which opened and closed to allow boats to pass through. A model of an airport also was mechanical with planes actually travelling along the runway. But the model village didn't just feature big landmarks, it also had a Cornish village, Kellogg's factory and a motorway flyover. At the time, the attraction was dubbed "the best of Britain in Miniature", according to an advert for the destination. One woman, Emma Cansdale from Waltham Abbey used to visit regularly as a child. The 52-year-old told Sun Travel: "As an eight-year-old it was like a mini wonderland. "Back then I loved the quaintness of model villages and miniature railways. Emma added: "I remember it was a hot summer day spent following the map to find the different attractions and eating ice cream." Across the village, there were over 200 models made from fibre glass and steel and it cost £2million to develop - about £13.5million now. The attraction took two years in total to plan and build. Best of British: Bournemouth's beach and vibrant city life is the perfect getaway And for little ones, there was Railriders club - which Emma was part of. "One of the reasons we went to Tucktonia was to pick up a sticker for my Railriders sticker book as they were participating in that scheme," Emma added. Old maps of Tucktonia Leisure Park that Emma has, show what featured at the 21acre site. And it wasn't just the model village - it also had a number of other attractions including fairground rides, a fun slide, boating lake, an amusement arcade, crazy golf, a go-kart track and a mini cinema. One leaflet even claims the park was home to "Europe's largest model landscape". Another poster claims it was "the greatest model Britain in the world". 6 According to Dorset Life, some famous faces made appearances at the park too. Comedian and magician Tommy Cooper and actor Jon Pertwee visited in 1978. Keith Chegwin and Maggie Philbin also hosted the BBC 's Multi-Coloured Swap Shop live from the park. Then in 1985, it was used as a film set for the alien movie Lifeforce - a sci-fi horror by Tobe Hooper, who also created The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Some believe that a number of the models were destroyed as part of the filming, whilst others claim that whilst the village was used as a set, the buildings destroyed in the film were actually different models created by the visual effects team. 6 In 1980, Alton Towers opened and many believed that this immediately had an impact on the number of visitors at Tucktonia. In the following years, the park changed ownership more than once and then in 1986, the park closed - just a decade after the model village had first opened. The site's buildings and fixtures were then all cleared to make the land available for a pub. In 2003, the site then transformed again into a number of retirement flats and homes. One fan of the park commented on social media: "What a fab place it was... Big childhood memories, very sad when it closed." Another added: "Absolutely loved Tucktonia. As a child these places were so exciting." There is also an abandoned £118million fairytale theme park that would have been a Disneyland rival – but closed after four years. Plus, Universal's UK theme park plans have dropped – here's what you can expect including nightclubs and film studios. 6
Telegraph
5 hours ago
- Telegraph
I attempted a budget weekend in Europe's most expensive city. Here's what happened
Why can't we be a bit more like the Norwegians? Fair distribution of wealth. Proper access to nature. Prioritisation of public health. Perhaps then we'd be happy and friendly and active, too. This was my daydream while walking around Ekebergparken, Oslo's free sculpture park, last week. Safe, clean, lovely Oslo, with its never-too-crowded attractions, tree-fringed fjords and actually-nice locals. Within 10 minutes of sitting down to my half-price beer at waterside Los Tacos, two separate glossy-locked men passed my lonely table and said hello. No agenda – just a bit of who's-your-football-team small talk, while actually looking me in the eye. The self-consciousness of solo travel was softened and it put a spring in my step for the night ahead. The Post Office released its annual City Costs Barometer recently and Oslo was rated the most expensive in Europe: £636.20 for a 'short break'. Being a penniless writer, I decided to attempt a fulfilling few days in Oslo – in high-season July – on less than half that budget: just £300. I'd been meaning to kick-start some intermittent fasting anyway – it would be a great excuse to begin. Flights with Norwegian were £76 return and accommodation at the new Citybox Oslo was £61.20 a night. Self check-in, comfy bed, right in the middle of town – zero complaints. The next non-negotiable was Oslo's wonderful City Pass. £66 for 48 hours gets your free train travel from the airport to the city centre, free boat rides, free access to 30 museums and attractions, and discounted food in certain restaurants. A woman I met on the clean, quiet, punctual train into town tipped me off that Los Tacos was the place for cheap(er) beers before 9pm. As a nation of lushes, Norway promises financial ruin – if you get change from a tenner you're doing well. So a cool £3.92 for this pilsner was a serious win. What about food? I asked the latter of the two lads in the bar where to get a reasonably priced meal. 'McDonald's or you go hungry,' he said. I asked him why Oslo was so expensive. 'Well, you pay what things actually cost to do properly,' as if it was blindingly obvious. But what does that mean? Everyone knows about Norway's oil-made pension pot: at £1.3 trillion – about the same as Australia's GDP – it's the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. The corollary is high wages and pricey services. Combine that with strong unions, high taxes – particularly on the fun stuff – and an allergy to cheap foreign labour, and a £10 Heineken begins to make sense. The new-ish Edvard Munch museum – all wonky glass and 13 storeys high; you can't miss it – is about 50 metres away and open till 9pm, so I swung by for a post-pint mooch. Three of the five existing versions of The Scream are on show, one at a time. The version you get – they differ a lot – depends on when you arrive. A whole museum dedicated to one artist feels excessive till you realise his wonderfully macabre oeuvre is more than 1,000 strong. My don't-miss is The Kiss, where two embracing lovers' faces melt into each other. Klimt meets Dalí meets Freud. Indeed, Munch's paintings laid the groundwork for Expressionism and Symbolism, later helping to shape the dream-logic of Surrealism. I'd left it too late for anything proper for dinner, so I walked over to the vaunted Illegal Burger in Oslo's going-out district. Anywhere else and the cook's hipster livery – snapback baseball cap; black-latex-gloves – would be semaphore for an eye-watering rip-off. And yet his award-winning cheeseburger was £11. 'Perfectly reasonable!' I bleated, remembering the £16 I'd paid for the same thing in Margate the week before. 'Yeah, it feels like the rest of the world is catching up,' he said. 'Norway doesn't feel as expensive anymore.' I started the next day with a decent filter coffee – available everywhere for about £3, often with free refills – and a kanelboller cinnamon bun. Then it was a short cycle (Oslo Bysykkel; £6.90 for a 72-hour Discover Oslo pass) on near-empty roads to the City Hall. It is home to Oslo's only queue, but free entry and a free tour with an eccentric local make up for it. Home of the Nobel Peace Prize, this paean to Nordic Functionalism is plastered with frescoes that espouse Norway's utopian ideals: a nation choosing to benefit the collective over the individual. I'd been advised to check out at least one of the fjord's islands, so I hopped one of the free ferries, about 100 metres from the City Hall. Alarmingly quiet with its electric motors, it took me and one other couple aboard about six minutes to dock at Hovedøya. A post-Second World War women's internment camp, it's now home to an artists collective, and happened to be exhibiting their works in what was once a munitions store and prison (free to enter). Allemannsretten – the 'every man' law that permits people a right to roam in nature – means you can walk, respectfully, over the island in whichever way you please. Be sure to meander around the unfenced ruins of its medieval Cistercian monastery. Founded in 1147 by English monks, it was later burnt down by a pirate keen on claiming the Norwegian throne. I considered a pit stop in the island's lovely little café, but the best waffles in town are at Haralds Vaffel in Grünerløkka (Oslo's hipster district) so I hopped back on the boat and bike for the 15-minute journey. First timers should try the 'classic': brunost (salty-sweet brown cheese), raspberry jam and sour cream. A most peculiar flavour bomb for £5.10. The streets here – neatly fringed with pretty bars and twee clothing stores – fizzed lightly with activity and things were beginning to feel like a benevolent Truman Show scenario. 'Where are the discarded poo bags?' I wondered. 'And why do I feel so unsettlingly safe?' There's a tourist board video titled 'Is it even a city?' that echoes this sentiment. In it, a local lad is mock-criticising Oslo for being 'too available'. 'If you don't have to stand in line for at least a couple of hours is it even worth seeing?' he complains. I put this to the test at the city's Historical Museum, where I queued for zero minutes to ogle the world's best-preserved Viking sword. It was nice to be able to stay until exactly 5pm (closing time) instead of being passive aggressively shooed to the door at a quarter to. The weekend's best coffee was at nearby Fuglen (£3.45). And lovers of vintage Scandi interiors will swoon. So, nature, waffles and culture complete – there's only really sauna left and the options abound. I went for fjord-side Salt (£15), 11 minutes away on a bike, where bars, low-fi DJs sets and three different sauna options make for a fun pre-dinner sweat. Sauna can be boring; this wasn't. Dinner. Let's imagine I had some delicious Japanese-style street food from Salt for £12 and that I didn't go to Madonna (named after Munch's famous painting), where a Michelin-vibe set menu costs £45. Crab-stuffed doughnuts, oysters with jalapeño and trout roe, celeriac with almond, potato galette, lamb shoulder with romesco and a gooseberry tart with buttermilk ice cream. For £45. I had blown my budget, but it was a bargain. I was served by co-owner Sara Johansson, previously restaurant manager at three‑Michelin‑star Maaemo (tasting menu: £175), round the corner. She and her business partners wanted to offer something akin to the same quality but for a price that her and her friends could afford. So, did I spend more than £300? Well, maybe a bit. But I'd proven one thing beyond all doubt. One needn't have deep pockets for a perfectly agreeable weekend in Oslo. And it's soothing to know what you are spending is contributing to a system that ultimately creates a clean, functional, safe city. Shouldn't we think just a little bit more like the Norwegians?
Times
5 hours ago
- Times
The Louvre makeover that will push up price of seeing Mona Lisa
A baking summer's afternoon at the Louvre. Milling around the Mona Lisa are maybe 150 people, all with their phones held high above their heads so they can snap that enigmatic smile. Meanwhile, in the vast galleries surrounding Leonardo's masterpiece, an eternal throng of visitors from every corner of the globe trudges wearily on — most, this far into the gallery, seemingly oblivious to the glorious art around them. Paris's great museum has about nine miles of galleries, spread over 403 rooms. You enter it from beneath IM Pei's celebrated glass pyramid, which on a day like this behaves like a giant magnifying glass for the blazing sun. Many visitors probably won't venture more than half a mile into the heart of the museum. But in this huge, former royal palace there is one tranquil room. Far from the madding crowd, Laurence des Cars, 59, the first female director of the Louvre in 228 years, sits in her book-lined office, the picture of the formidable, Sorbonne-educated Parisian intellectual she is. If she is physically distanced from the heaving mass of humanity trudging round her domain, however, her brain is constantly occupied with it. 'One of my first decisions when I became the director in 2021 was to limit our daily admissions to 30,000,' she says. 'You know that, just before Covid, the Louvre was getting ten million visitors a year? When I got here the staff said, 'Please let's not go back to that because some days we were up to 45,000 visitors.' And that figure is too much. Even now we are saturated. The building is suffocating. It's not good for staff, visitors or the art.' Last month the Louvre's staff emphasised their grievances by going on a spontaneous strike (a 'mass expression of exasperation', their union official said), leaving thousands of tourists outside with no idea why they weren't being let in. 'It wasn't a strike,' des Cars says firmly. 'It was a meeting with the unions because of the conditions and especially the heat. I put in place immediate measures to make things better and we reopened that afternoon.' All the world's top museums — from the Vatican in Rome to the British Museum in London — are facing this same problem: huge congestion, especially around the handful of masterpieces that every tourist has heard of. But the overcrowding is felt most acutely by the Louvre, which still receives more visitors (8.7 million last year) than any other museum, yet has some of the worst facilities. We know this because six months ago a memo outlining its problems was leaked to a Paris newspaper. It caused a stir not just because it was addressed to Rachida Dati, France's culture minister, but because it was written by des Cars. She was jaw-droppingly frank. 'Visiting the Louvre is a physical ordeal,' she wrote. 'Visitors have no space to take a break. The food options and restroom facilities are insufficient in volume, falling below international standards. The signage needs to be completely redesigned.' Pei's pyramid, she went on, creates a 'very inhospitable' atmosphere on hot days. Other parts of the old building are 'no longer watertight'. Nobody has revealed who leaked the memo, but it's hard to imagine des Cars being upset by the revelation because within days came a dramatic intervention from on high. President Macron announced a redevelopment project that he called the 'nouvelle renaissance' of the Louvre. It's masterminded by des Cars and every bit as radical a reshaping as François Mitterrand's 'grand projét' of the 1980s, which led to Pei's pyramid. By chance it will run simultaneously with something similar in London: the £1 billion masterplan to renovate the British Museum, a coincidence that hasn't escaped des Cars' notice. 'I talk a lot with Nick Cullinan [the BM's director],' she says. 'He's wonderful, a great professional and he's dealing with exactly the same issues.' The most controversial feature of des Cars' plan is her proposed solution to the problem of that huge rugby scrum around the Mona Lisa. She wants to remove the painting to one of several new underground galleries to be excavated under the Cour Carrée courtyard, where it will get its own entrance requiring punters to buy an additional ticket (the price is yet to be decided). • The secret life of the Louvre: inside the world's biggest museum She also envisages a second entrance to the Louvre on the far side from where the pyramid is. 'The idea of having just one entrance to this enormous museum was a nice idea in the 1980s when the Louvre had just four million visitors a year,' she says. 'But that was before the Berlin Wall fell, before the Chinese started travelling, before international tourism reached the levels we have today. We are going back to what was always the case — several entrances for the Louvre.' At the same time the museum will be given a technical makeover. That will take ten years, des Cars estimates, whereas she suggests that the Mona Lisa gallery and the new entrance will be ready by 2031 or 2032. 'We are running a competition to find an architect and will appoint one early next year,' she says. 'And the Louvre won't close at all. That's the strength of having a very large building. You can rebuild half of it and still function in the other half.' One benefit of all this, des Cars says, is that it will help people to get to different galleries more quickly, introducing more lifts and better signage. 'On the second floor we have the most extraordinary collection of French paintings anywhere in the world and virtually nobody looks at them,' she says. 'You start to think, what's wrong with Poussin? The answer is nothing. The real problem is that to get from the pyramid to Poussin takes 20 to 25 minutes, and that's if you walk quickly and don't get lost. If we can sort out these problems people will discover many new joys.' It comes at a price, though. The ten-year project is expected to cost about £700 million. Unlike the British Museum's masterplan, however, at least half the required funding is already guaranteed. 'The technical renovation will be funded by the Ministry of Culture,' des Cars says. 'As for the new galleries and entrance, our trademark licence deal with the Louvre Abu Dhabi [which des Cars spent six years helping to set up] will give us at least £175 million. The rest we will raise from corporate and private supporters.' Even here, des Cars has an advantage over her British counterparts. 'When you say the word Louvre people all over the world pay attention,' she says. The gallery has one other huge income stream not available to UK museums. It charges for admission and the ticket prices are about to go up — £19 for EU citizens and a hefty £26 for non-EU visitors, including the poor old Brits. Sounds as if we need to rejoin the EU, I say. 'Please do!' des Cars says, beaming. But what does she think of the UK's generous policy of keeping its national museums free to all, even foreigners? 'I am absolutely not allowed to make any judgment on that,' she says with a laugh, and then makes one anyway. 'I mean, it's very admirable but is it sustainable in today's world? That's a political decision. I leave you to have your debate.' • Best time to visit the Louvre: top tips for your trip The daughter and granddaughter of distinguished French writers, des Cars was a respected art historian, writing a classic study of the pre-Raphaelites before she started running big Parisian museums (she was head of the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée de l'Orangerie before the Louvre). Surely it must break her heart to see thousands of people using great art merely as background for their selfies, disrupting other visitors' enjoyment in the process? Has she considered banning the use of phones, as other art galleries have done? 'I know they are trying but I simply don't know how you do it,' she says. 'We considered it when I was at the Orangerie and the security team said, 'We can't force people not to use phones.' Also I think it's dangerous to go against the times we live in, but you can remind people that they are in a cultural space and need to respect each other, the staff and the artworks.' • Mona Lisa to get her own room in the Louvre And perhaps be a bit more curious about venturing into galleries that don't contain the most famous paintings on the planet? 'We are already making changes to attract people to less-visited parts of the museum,' des Cars says. 'For instance, we could have put our new Louvre Couture [the museum's first venture into fashion] in our exhibitions space, but instead we placed it within the department of decorative arts and now those galleries get a hugely increased number of visitors, especially young people.' As the Louvre's first female director, can she do anything to mitigate the fact that the vast majority of artworks here were created by men? 'You cannot change history but there are other ways of addressing that question. In the spring of 2027 I'm programming an exhibition on the theme of amazons, ancient and modern — from Greek women warriors to powerful women today. It will be a fascinating journey.' And how is this very powerful woman enjoying her own fascinating journey? 'When I was appointed I felt ready to run the Louvre, which sounds immodest,' des Cars replies. 'Maybe I will be a disaster and someone will have to shout, 'Stop!' I don't know.' I would be amazed if anyone did that — or at least not until the mid-2030s, when she has finished remaking the Louvre for the 21st century. Additional research by Ziba Manteghi
