Heidelberg Castle has been a ruin for longer than it was ever a palace. Perched above the Neckar valley in red sandstone quarried from the valley below, it accumulated centuries of ambition and catastrophe before nature and neglect finished the job.

Its most romantic chapter arrived around 1610, when Friedrich V had an ornate gate erected overnight as a birthday surprise for his English bride, Elizabeth Stuart. The gate still stands. Friedrich's luck ran out when he accepted the Bohemian crown, lasted one winter, and fled into exile, earning the nickname the Winter King. The terraced gardens that his architect had designed were never finished as a result.

France eventually delivered the final blows. In 1689, troops set fire to the castle during the War of Succession. They returned in 1693 and detonated 38 mines loaded with 27,000 pounds of powder. Lightning finished off the highest towers in 1764.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace the castle's grounds and gardens, connecting Friedrich's doomed romance to the French destruction and explaining how the ruins became a symbol of the Romantic era, drawing Goethe and artists from across Europe.