Wernigerode Castle stands in the Harz mountains above the town of Wernigerode in Saxony-Anhalt. It was first built between 1110 and 1120 as a Romanesque fortress. It was enlarged in the Gothic style in the late fifteenth century and rebuilt as a Renaissance fortress in the sixteenth. In 1710 Count Christian Ernest rebuilt it in the Baroque style.
The present appearance comes largely from a historicist rebuild commissioned by Count Otto and completed in 1893. The style is Neo-Romantic and combines half-timber with stone. It is often compared to Neuschwanstein Castle. A spiral staircase tower from the sixteenth century is still intact, and large arched windows survive from the Gothic enlargement.
The castle chapel was demolished in 1870, and a new one was built by Carl Frühling and inaugurated in 1883, with stained glass by Carl Christian Andrea. The Thirty Years' War damaged the castle heavily, and few medieval walls remain.
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