KARLSRUHE, GERMANY—The International Business Times reports that architectural historian Julian Hanschke of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology has digitally reconstructed Heidelberg Castle using photographs, drawings, and surveys of the ruins made by researchers some 100 years ago. The result is a highly detailed, 3-D model of what the Renaissance-era castle would have looked like inside and out in 1683. Located on a hill overlooking the town of Heidelberg, the first castle building on the site was constructed in the early thirteenth century. A second castle was built in the late thirteenth century, but in 1537, a fire started by a bolt of lightning destroyed the upper castle. The castle complex was repeatedly rebuilt and expanded, and damaged by war and fire, until it became a source for building materials in the late eighteenth century. To read about excavations at another castle, go to “Letter from England: Stronghold of the Kings in the North.”
