The sleepy village of Trendelburg sits around the skirts of a castle-topped outcrop, amid a sumptuous flowing landscape of forests and fields in the region of Hesse, north of Kassel. These days the castle itself, Burg Trendelburg, is a hotel which plays a significant role in the Fairytale Road, as it is from one of its five towers that Rapunzel was meant to have let down her hair for her handsome prince to climb.

Not far away, through the wild boar and deer rich forests of the Reinhardswald, is Sababurg, which also plays a role on the Road, this time as Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, although here the whole place is currently sleeping, pending refurbishment as a hotel. Its grounds remain popular for walking.

There’s a lot more good walking between the two, in the Urwald section of the giant Reinhardswald forest, a place where you can really suspend your disbelief whilst wandering through a cathedral of beech trees and giant anthropomorphically-shaped oaks, some of which are thought to be between 700 and 1,000 years old.

As for Burg Trendelburg itself, it is a lovely place to stay for anyone with a smidgen of imagination or romanticism.

The thousand-year-old fortification surrounds a courtyard of chestnut trees which is entered across a drawbridge. Its entrance hall has tapestries and metal knights, from where a creaking dark oak staircase leads up to bedrooms with ‘himmelbett’ (heaven bed) four posters and modern bathrooms hidden ingeniously away through pretend cupboards. By virtue of its position each of the bedrooms has a commanding view, especially the tower bedroom where Rapunzel supposedly hung out.

It’s moderately priced, and particularly popular with overseas visitors.

A place to celebrate

Of course there’s no evidence of the truth of any of the Rapunzel malarkey – it’s a fairy story – but one of the early editions of Grimm’s fairytales had an illustration of a tower castle, and the tourism people were looking for a suitable lookalike when contemplating the creation of the Fairytale Road, over 50 years ago. Hey presto: Trendelburg becomes Rapunzel’s castle. Great marketing.

It certainly capitalizes on it. A large downstairs restaurant – far too big for a 22 bedroom property – has embossed leather armchairs, fleur de lys carpets and swords on the walls, plus an expansive outdoor terrace with commanding views. It’s an obvious choice for celebrations.

So the place that was once known for hiding maidens away in towers, is now a very popular wedding venue.

documenta 14, which has just started in the city of Kassel and will run until September 17, takes place once every five years in this otherwise unappealing city in the midriff of Germany – although the big difference this year is that it kicked off with a pre-show in Athens, and that artists are meant to have worked with both destinations.

The first documenta, back in 1955, was originally planned by local art professor Arnold Bode. At the time, Kassel was still reeling from the impact of war. As a centre for a lot of heavy industry – tanks, locomotives, etc – it had been around 85 percent destroyed in Allied bombing raids, and it was hastily rebuilt in 1950s style.

Bode’s initial idea was to display art from movements that had been labelled as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazi regime, such as Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Blauer Reiter and Futurism. Over the years, however, the focus has shifted to any contemporary art, coming from all corners of the world. This year there will inevitably be a strong Greek bias, such as the giant ‘Parthenon of Books’ in the Friedrichsplatz.

documenta’s approach is to hire a completely artistic director every time, so that the show remains fresh and original. And this year’s director, Polish art critic Adam Szymczyk, has selected around 160 artists, most of whom will regard being accepted by the exhibition as an almighty step forward in their careers. Artists generally have to come along with their own funding, but there’s also very generous outside sponsorship if their cash supply runs a bit short.

In Kassel, the show has a couple of key venues, the Fridericianum and the Gloria Cinema, but there will be art works all over town, in parks, on top of buildings, on street corners, and even under the ground.

The first dOCUMENTA, back in 1955, was originally planned by a local art professor as something of a sideshow to run alongside the Federal Horticultural exhibition.

At the time, Kassel was still reeling from the impact of war. As a centre for a lot of heavy industry – tanks, locomotives, etc – it had been around 85 percent destroyed in Allied bombing raids, and it was hastily rebuilt in 1950s style, which doesn’t look particularly pleasing on the eye today. A lot of imported labour was involved in the rebuilding process, and the resultant community is very ethnically mixed. As a tourist destination, it’s fair to say that it would struggle to attract visitors, if it wasn’t for the likes of dOCUMENTA.

The initial idea of the show’s creator, Arnold Bode, was to display art from movements that had been labelled as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazi regime, such as Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Blauer Reiter and Futurism. Over the years, however, the focus has shifted to any contemporary art, coming from all corners of the world.

For the artists, it’s a big career move

dOCUMENTA’s approach is to hire a completely artistic director every time, so that the show remains fresh and original. In a typical year it contracts around 160 artists, most of whom will regard being accepted by the exhibition as an almighty step forward in their careers – so there’s no shortage of applicants. Artists generally have to come along with their own funding, but there’s also very generous outside sponsorship (amounting to as much as €50 million) if their cash supply runs a bit short.

The show has its main spaces in a couple of key venues, the Fridericianum and the Gloria Cinema, but art works appear all over town, in parks, on top of buildings, on street corners, and even under the ground (a recent artist did an installation that bored a thousand metres down beneath the central square).

The organisers offer what they call ‘dTOURS’ , which last two hours each, and are led by trained personnel called ‘Worldly Companions’, mainly from Kassel and with different backgrounds and generations. So a tour helps get under the skin both of the show, and of what is not, on the face of it, a particularly aesthetically appealing destination. It’s interesting stuff, and a shame that it only comes round once in every five years.

More information on the dOCUMENTA website.

Their stories are some of the most famous folk tales and fairy tales in the world. Hänsel and Gretel, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Snow White, Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood, amongst many, many others, most of which have long since been re-versioned by the likes of Disney, given happier endings and become universal stories. But these tales were originally sourced from rural village life in western Germany by two academics who spent their childhood days in the countryside north-east of Frankfurt, and their adult years at universities in Kassel and Göttingen. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

The Grimms were story collectors, not authors. Most of what they published was already widely known, and very generic (‘Once there was a rich man….’) and several probably originated in France, but there are also stories that have become associated with certain locations, and that is what concerns us here. And some are distributed along what the German Tourist Board markets as the ‘Fairytale Road’ (Deutsche Märchenstrasse), which begins in Bremen and ends at Hanau, where the Brothers were born.

The Grimms were story collectors, not authors

In Bremen itself, there’s the story of the Town Musicians, four ageing animals who outwit a gang of robbers. In Hamelin, to the south, it’s the turn of the Pied Piper (for more detail see the North section of this website).

The 15^th century Sababurg Castle, between Kassel and Göttingen in the Weserbergland hills, is supposedly Sleeping Beauty’s castle, and the neighbouring town of Hofgeismar is meant to be her birthplace. Meanwhile Kassel itself has a museum dedicated to the brothers and their work.

Bad Wildungen, a mining district south-west of Kassel, was once the home to Margarethe von Waldeck, a count’s daughter who was poisoned at a young age and it is believed that her fate inspired the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And the Schwalm region just to the south is considered to be the birthplace of Little Red Riding Hood, while Amönau, further west, has what’s known as Rapunzel’s Tower, although the direct connections to the tale of that name remain obscure.

Of course, the actual origins of all these stories are eminently debatable, with the Brothers on the whole careful to avoid mention of specific locations within the texts. When they do (as in Bremen and Hamelin) tourism can benefit considerably, but Swabia, a region south of Stuttgart, probably regrets the way its people are portrayed in another rare case of naming names: the Grimms’ story of the Seven Swabians, in which the seven travel the world looking for adventure but constantly make fools of themselves. Lampooning specific populations in this manner probably wouldn’t be politically correct today.