{"id":2138,"date":"2011-06-11T14:31:30","date_gmt":"2011-06-11T14:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.com\/?p=2138"},"modified":"2011-06-11T14:31:30","modified_gmt":"2011-06-11T14:31:30","slug":"habsburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/?p=2138","title":{"rendered":"Habsburg"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A grey Saturday called for a gentle expedition together with a trip to the Bally shoe outlet store. (The latter was a right off as their prices – even heavily discounted – are totally outrageous, enough said).<\/p>\n

We were much more successful in our visit to the Habsburg Castle. This is a tiny little castle in Canton Aargau, less than 45 minutes west of Z\u00fcrich. It’s size belies it’s historical importance though, as it was where the Habsburg family started out and from where they went on to become probably the most important family in Europe in the 1500s-1700s, when they were the Holy Roman Emperors. (I studied them in great depth for my history A level many moons ago and have never forgotten how fascinating I found them). By the 1700s they held control over great swathes of Europe – the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic, northern Serbia, much of Italy, not to mention the lands of the Spanish branch of the family. They caused a lot of the Pope’s no end of trouble, as neither Popes nor Emperors would accede to the power of the other. Fascinating stuff.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The castle was built from 1020 onwards, with additions made until around 1300, by which time the Habsburg family had moved on to grander things and settled in Austria – so it’s pretty much 1,000 years old and still standing. The inside has been renovated to make sure it’s safe, but the walls are original and about 3 feet thick. There’s a small exhibition about the history of the castle in the tower.<\/p>\n

As far as I know it’s the only castle in Switzerland where you can also eat lunch. The restaurant is on the left hand side part where all the windows are – the food was excellent as were the views, but for some strange reason we were the only guests.<\/p>\n

Maybe other people don’t get as excited about the historical significance of this little castle as I do. The teenagers certainly thought I was slightly bonkers, but lunch was good so they put up with me rabbiting on!<\/p>\n

Helen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A grey Saturday called for a gentle expedition together with a trip to the Bally shoe outlet store. (The latter was a right off as their prices – even heavily discounted – are totally outrageous, enough said). We were much more successful in our visit to the Habsburg Castle. This is a tiny little castle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sQtrc-habsburg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2138"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2143,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions\/2143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runquiltknitwrite.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}