It is located in the German village of Hohenschwangau near the town of Füssen, part of the county of Ostallgäu in southwestern Bavaria, Germany, very close to the border with Austria.

The fortress Schwangau (literally translated the Swan District), which was first mentioned in historical records dating from the 12th century, stood high up on a rock on the site of the present 19th-century Neuschwanstein castle.

Between 1440 and 1521 the Lords had to sell their fief with Imperial immediacy to the Wittelsbach dukes of Bavaria, but continued to occupy the castle as Burgraves.

The purchaser, Johann Paumgartner, a wealthy Augsburg merchant, had the lower castle reconstructed by Italian architect Lucio di Spazzi who already worked on the Hofburg, Innsbruck.

He acquired the dilapidated building – then still known as Schwanstein – in 1832, abandoning his father's wish that he should move into the old castle (Hohes Schloss) in the nearby town of Füssen.

[1] More than 90 wall paintings (by such artists as Lorenzo Quaglio and Michael Neher) represent the history of Schwangau, as well as medieval German romances such as Parzival and the story of Lohengrin, the Knight of the Swan, on which Richard Wagner later based his operas Lohengrin of 1848 and Parsifal of 1882, sponsored by Ludwig II who had grown up with these stories at Hohenschwangau.

The Queen's cousin, Frederick William IV of Prussia, had Stolzenfels Castle on the Rhine rebuilt at the same time in the Gothic Revival style.

In May 1941, Prince Adalbert of Bavaria was purged from the military under Hitler's Prinzenerlass and withdrew to the family castle Hohenschwangau, where he lived for the rest of the war.

Guided tours are provided in German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Czech, Slovenian, and Japanese.