This, I think, is one of Mad King Ludwig's palaces. Since this is a tour of Bavaria, it's time I told you about Mad King Ludwig.

Picture this:

It's 3 AM, some time in the late 1800's. Deep in an isolated, wooded gorge in the Bavarian Alps sits, improbably, an ornate French rococo palace, complete with stunning, statue-studded gardens and fountains fed by springs bursting out of the surrounding mountain walls. From the palace's second-floor state room, across the chill early-morning air, comes the sound of music -- Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" in full "Apocalypse Now" swing.

Inside, a man sits in a great gilded chair, alone, an insomniac, gazing with glazed eyes at the spectacle before him: an elaborate production of Wagner's latest addition to the "Ring" cycle, performed in full dress and props at his command. Soon he may grow bored of this performance, and decide it is high time to get a move on, in a full royal procession in the dead of night, to another of his unreal palaces some 50 miles away, on the other side of the Alps. There, as the dawn creeps in, he will collapse into sleep.

This was King Ludwig II of Bavaria, coronated at age 18 and soon left substantively out of a job by the Kaiser's unification of Germany. Not content to rot quietly in obsolescence, Ludwig devoted himself and most of Bavaria's resources to two major passions: bankrolling Richard Wagner and building jaw-dropping palaces, including the French-styled Linderhof described above and the Neuschwaunstein, upon which the Disneyland Castle was underwhelmingly modeled. Other interests included insomnia and bisexuality.

For no good reason, the Bavarians resent history's labeling Ludwig II "mad." But make no mistake: that motherfucker was crazy. Howard Hughes, eat your heart out. He died at age 41, I think, of an unsolved drowning -- either murder or suicide.