A series from Germaneum
AURA
Castles and Palaces of Germany
Not a travel guide. Stories about places that know more than they let on: castles on basalt, palaces with poise, and the traces that travelled from here out into the world.
Volume 1 out now in German · English edition coming soon
Setting off
A book like a family on an outing
Each AURA volume tells the story of one landscape and its castles, palaces and gardens. No opening times, no star ratings and never the words „hidden gem“. Time for the detour instead.
7 + 7
The big ones and the little ones
Seven main chapters that are allowed to take their time. Each brings along a detour, the little sibling. Skip them if you like. You’ll miss the punchline, though.
Rail
Arriving without a satnav
Every chapter ends with a box: getting there by bus and train, the key links and one last look back. The landscape in between tells half the story.
World
Beyond borders
Every place has a story that reaches beyond Germany. From Catherine the Great to Dürer drawings that survived the war in, of all places, a torture chamber.
Arriving · Volume 1
AURA · Volume 1 · 2026
Beyond Dresden
Splendour and Legend
Castles on basalt, palaces that can’t make up their minds whether to be fortified or elegant, and gardens that were never finished and are perfect precisely for that reason. Fourteen places around Dresden, from the countess who spent forty-nine years at Stolpen to the column that measures distance in hours.
Available
E-book
Coming soon
English edition: Beyond Dresden – Splendour and Legend
German edition
Audiobook
One last look back
More pictures of every place at
- I.Forty-Nine YearsStolpen CastleFrom Swords to RucksacksHohnstein Castle
- II.Luxury for Home UseRammenau Baroque PalaceHunting Meets IndustryKlippenstein Castle
- III.The Trendsetter on Castle HillAlbrechtsburg MeissenPolitics in the Language of FlowersZabeltitz Palace
- IV.Where Princes Played CaptainMoritzburg CastleBaroque with Added FizzSchloss Wackerbarth
- V.The Unconquerable GiantKönigstein FortressThe Responsibility of a ViewSonnenstein Castle
- VI.A Paradox in StoneWeesenstein CastleHow Far Is an Hour?Lauenstein Castle
- VII.The Search for the PalaceGroßsedlitz Baroque GardenA Palace Made of GlassPirna-Zuschendorf Manor
Coming back
The land beyond Dresden doesn’t give away its stories all at once. It always keeps something back for next time.
Coming soon · Volume 2
AURA · Volume 2 · in progress
Middle Rhine
Tolls and Tales
Downstream from Bingen to Koblenz, through the Upper Middle Rhine Valley World Heritage Site. Seven castles, seven detours and one fortress for looking back. It is about tolls that built castles, about Prussians who properly invented the romantic Rhine, and about a woman on a rock who never existed and has still been distracting boatmen for two hundred years. Queen Victoria has been. So has Mark Twain.
And after that?
More landscapes are being planned.