Did you know that in Berlin there are several palaces to explore?

My mission today is to show you three of my favorite German castles.

And then you can choose your favorite.

I'm exploring Charlottenburg Palace, Glienicke Palace and the Grunewald Hunting Lodge.

It's going to be a day full of royal history and grandeur.

We're starting off right in the center of the city at Charlottenburg Palace.

This isn't only the largest, it's the most significant palace in Berlin, because here we're literally walking in the footsteps of Prussian Kings and Queens and Roman emperors.

So let's go in.

But why exactly is Charlottenburg Palace such a big deal in Berlin?

I think it's the most important palace in Berlin, because it's a place where the royal family lived for over seven generations.

It was built around about 1700, and the Prussian Hohenzollern family.

They used this palace as a summer residence till the end of the monarchy in 1918.

And then it became a museum.

It's a substitute for the Berlin palace.

Time to explore the magnificent Baroque apartments.

Some of the highlights are the Porcelain Room, the palace chapel, and the bedchamber of King Frederick the First.

What makes Charlottenburg Palace all the more amazing are the gardens.

So much nature right in the middle of Berlin.

And it's a great spot to come to to escape the hustle and bustle of the city.

The lake here is connected to the Spree river which flows through Berlin, so the royalty was able to travel between Charlottenburg Palace and the City Palace by gondolas.

The gardens were originally designed in French style and later expanded in the English landscape garden style.

On to the next stop of the day.

For the perfect day trip from Berlin, and for a little bit of Mediterranean flair, you have to check out the Glienicke Palace.

This charming little palace was designed to look exactly like an Italian villa.

It's a perfect fairytale spot, and it takes less than an hour to get here from the center of Berlin.

This neoclassical summer palace was designed around 1825 for the Prince Karl of Prussia.

He was thrilled by the beauty of the classical world and wanted his very own Roman style country house in Berlin.

The gardens include an orangery, greenhouses courtyards, fountains and even a casino.

I'm not going to lie, I could definitely imagine living here in this palace.

If you'd like a more remote option, then you have to check out the Grunewald Hunting Lodge Palace.

This palace is tucked away in what feels like the middle of nowhere, because we're completely surrounded by lakes and forests, but we're actually just a few minutes drive from the center of Berlin.

This is the oldest preserved castle in Berlin, completed in 1543 as a place for Berlin royalty to come to hunt.

Let's check out the Hunting Depot, although I imagine it's not going to be very vegetarian or vegan friendly.

Intense.

Sometimes, before the hunting starts, they had checked who would shoot which boar or deer.

The barons or princes or the king had the right to hunt deers or boars.

And the normal man in the Middle Ages had the right to hunt little animals, hares, for instance, or little birds, or to come for fishing.

This is also the perfect place for art lovers.

There are some secret treasures hidden here.

Almost 30 paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

And Lucas Cranach the Younger and his workshop.

It's the largest collection of Cranach paintings in Berlin and was originally curated by the Hohenzollern family, which transports you back to the time of the Reformation and Martin Luther.

Well, there you go.

Just three of Berlin's multiple palaces.

My personal favorite?

Probably the Glienicke palace.

Just because of how beautiful and peaceful it is there.

But what was yours?

And what other German castles would you like to see?

Here in France, time has stood still - for one day at least!

Myriam Hermant and her friends are dressed up for the annual Journée Grand Siècle or Grand century celebration.

It's a time marking the reign of French King Louis the 14th.

I'm a Parisian and I've been passionate about history for years.

I especially love the 17th to 18th century, so it's a real pleasure to come here today, to watch how they might have carried themselves and behaved.

I wanted to find out how they lived at that time by dressing the way they did.

So I put on special pants with high heeled shoes and I'm wearing makeup and a wig.

We're not used to doing these sorts of things in our time.

Today's event is taking place at the Chateau de Vaux le Vicomte, an hour south of the French capital, Paris.

It was home to Nicolas Fouquet, the former finance minister of Louis the 14th.

Every year there's a grand picnic on the grounds.

Participants can dress up in old fashioned costumes and take part in a contest for the best setting.

On any other day, Miriam might be working at her job in elevator sales and David as a graphic artist.

But today, they're preparing foods that could have been served to noblemen back in the day.

Here you see macaroons just like back then, and jellied fruit candies.

We also have regular fruit and a place setting that was made specially for today.

These are the little cheese pastries I made at home, according to a recipe that I discovered in a book about the cuisine of Louis the 14th.

They're very salty because that's how they conserved food back then.

Around 20 picnics have been set up on the grounds.

Three judges make their rounds to decide who has the most authentic setting, and they're looking for certain criteria.

What we're looking at is the choice of the dishes, the linen, the elegance, the flowers, the candlesticks.

It's important to create an atmosphere and tell a story.

And we should feel drawn to sit down with these people and spend an evening at their table.

While the judges make their decisions, Myriam and her friends take a tour of the castle.

It was built in the mid 17th century by Nicolas Fouquet, and it served as inspiration for the Royal Palace of Versailles.

When I'm dressed like this, I really feel like I'm back in the 17th or 18th century.

It's as if Nicolas Fouquet is going to walk in to say hello any minute, and I can greet him.

Back in the gardens, the participants are enjoying the atmosphere.

Most of them have made their own costumes for the occasion.

This man is dressed as a spy who also lived as a woman.

I'm the Knight of Eon named Charles dEon and Genevieve de Beaumont.

Two characters in one!

I make all of the costumes for ourselves.

Its wonderful to just sit in the sunshine and picnic and be with like-minded people.

We wanted to create a special scene that really stood out from the others.

We're quite pleased with the results.

And he should be happy because his group's picnic won the contest.

But for Myriam, David and their friends, the day wasn't lost even if they didn't win.

We're happy with our table and the way everything looks.

We're spending time with friends and look the way we wanted to.

We feel as if we've won too.

All in all, it was a great day for everyone.

Celebrating the grand century of Louis the 14th.

Today I'm in Vienna, tracing the footsteps of one particularly beloved 19th century royal empress.

Empress Elisabeth, or Sisi is famous for her eccentricities.

She had a tattoo, worked out and drank wine for breakfast every day.

She was a woman who went against the grain.

There is something enticing about this empress who wanted more than just to produce heirs.

But what is it exactly?

The drama, the tragic events in her life, a love affair, she was assassinated when she was 61 years old.

All this is a mixture for fascination.

My first stop of the day is the Hofburg Imperial Palace.

This was the political center of the monarchy, and today it fulfills the same role for the democratic republic.

Every former Austrian Empress and Emperor lived here, including Sisi, of course.

Her old rooms have been turned into a museum, and since I admittedly had never heard of Sisi before I moved to Germany, I think I better start here.

First of all, who actually was Empress Elisabeth, or Sisi?

She was the Empress, the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph.

So she was a member of the Habsburg dynasty, a European royal dynasty which actually was one of the leading families of Europe, the Habsburg Empire of her time.

In Germany and Austria Sisi is an icon.

Her life has inspired several films.

I'm getting the feeling that people have this kind of obsession with her.

Why do you think that is?

The more we get distant from her, actual lifetimes, the more she becomes a pop cultural phenomenon.

Because during her lifetime she more or less withdrew from public life.

She abhorred all the conservative traditions of Habsburg court, whereas nowadays she's more or less a symbol of this Habsburg dynasty.

She is like the iconic Habsburg of our time, although she actually was a complete misfit during her lifetime.

In the palace turned museum, you can see the gymnastics apparatus that she used every morning, as well as her bathtub.

Sisi apparently took warm bath in olive oil.

She spent much of her time in her private rooms here.

My next stop is Vienna's Empress Elisabeth Memorial in the Volksgarten.

Here I'm meeting author and tourist guide Renate Hofbauer.

I think she was looking for a real love and real personal happiness.

But everything she could find that the court was stiffness, rules.

And she had to present, and to produce children, of course, male children.

So she was reduced to to that.

And she was criticized all the time for everything: how she behaved.

She was anorexic.

Nowadays, we know it is rooted in unhappiness, in not being understood in in psychological problems.

Renate takes me to Schönbrunn palace.

It was the summer residence of the Habsburg family.

Sisi spent a lot of time here.

So did Sisi actually want to be an empress?

I don't think so.

She loved, she fell in love with Franz Joseph.

And I think she wanted to have a good marriage.

A loving marriage.

And she told her mother, oh, I wish he was a tailor.

So can you tell me about the assassination of Sisi?

Yeah.

She was assassinated by an Italian anarchist while she was traveling to Switzerland.

He didn't really have anything against her personally, he just wanted to strike the monarchy or the to hit the feudal system.

A tragic end to a tragic life.

Now that I've learned so much about the Empress, her life, her history, I want to see if I can get a taste of what her life was like here in Vienna.

For that, I'm visiting one of Vienna's oldest and most renowned confectioneries.

Cafe Demel has been a Viennese institutions since 1786.

Sisi was very fond of their delicacies.

Candied violet blossom leaves, Sisi's favorite sweets.

My next and final stop of the day is a very special one.

This jeweler has been here for over 200 years, and in 1858 they created a set of diamond stars for Sisi's hair.

The Sisi stars!

Christoph Köcherts family designed many pieces for the Empress.

She had a love of jewelry, and we were lucky enough to provide this jewelry.

But these diamond stars, they also became iconic, because there was a very famous painting by Winterhalter where she's painted with a wonderful long hair, and her hair was adorned with these diamond stars.

I also want to ask, do you think it might be possible for me to try the stars myself?

Of course!

With pleasure.

So here you have a tiara with the diamond stars.

Here you see, the copies of the original 27 and Sisi had a case exactly like this.

And they looked exactly like her 27 stars.

Dare I ask how much something like this cost?

This tiara, like it is here.

It's about 77,000.

Okay, so I just sit here very carefully.

Hasn't it been fun to dip our toes into the world of this Austrian empress?

Honestly, it seems like Sisi was pretty iconic.

I can totally see why people are so fascinated by her, and it seems like her legend will live on for a long time to come.

Well, welcome to Highclere Castle.

I'm Lady Carnarvon.

This is Freya, and this is Stella.

And perhaps you'd like to come in, and I can show you around some of the rooms which are so familiar from Downton Abbey.

Come on you two!

Highclere Castle is an amazing place to live.

It's both a privilege and responsibility.

You would never build a house like this today.

It's got 250 to 300 rooms, so it was built for another time.

The imposing manor house in the English county of Hampshire, about 100km west of London, serves as the location for the British film and TV series Downton Abbey, and is instantly recognizable.

In real life, it is the seat of the Earls of Carnarvon.

Lady Carnarvon has taken care of the estate for 20 years.

Well, I'm in the saloon, which is really the heart of the castle, whether it's Highclere Castle or Downton Abbey, and whether it's the fictional word or the real world, we use this room much the same.

In fact, there's little difference here between the film and reality, except that a few pieces of furniture are sometimes removed from the former medieval dining room.

One of the other main rooms, both for us and for Downton Abbey, is, of course, the library.

I think it's so many people's most favorite room.

Here too, hardly a thing was changed for the shoot.

The approximately 6500 books are not props, but real historical treasures.

It's funny to think that everybody loves the red sofas, which to us were always there because Maggie Smith sat on them.

There have been some accidents, and actually, on the very first day of the TV series, they dropped a lighting boom on an objet vertu, which we left in place.

But they didn't mean to, and things happen.

One of the most lavish rooms in Downton Abbey is the drawing room, where the family gathers or receives guests.

Even in reality, the room is particularly inviting with its paintings and silk wallpaper.

For many, exploring the castle on a guided tour, this is the highlight.

It's a lovely room, actually, and then it's kind of enfilade to the smoking room next door where I can set up some drinks and again, they use the house much as we use the house, which I think in Downton Abbey gives us the sense of reality and authenticity because it's really here.

And then next door is the dining room.

This room where in real life, royalty and statesmen already dined back under the watchful eye of King Charles the First, appears virtually unchanged in the series as the family's dining room.

Downton Abbey used our dining table, actually, so they always had a white cloth on it because they would sit here for hours on end, shooting a scene literally from seven in the morning for the next 11 hours to get 4.5 minutes on television, if they were lucky.

Even the fictional royal family's bedrooms were filmed in Highclere.

However, the character Lady Grantham's chamber appears cooler on screen than in real life.

The light blue wall color has meanwhile been replaced by a warm oyster tone.

And the door through which the chambermaid enters actually leads somewhere else entirely.

In real life, this is actually a cupboard but in Downton Abbey they wanted a door out of which O'Brien, the lady's maid for Lady Grantham, could pop in and out so she'd hide in the cupboard and at the appropriate moment come out when they called action Actually, there are dressing gowns and kind of old pictures stacked in there.

However, filming was not limited to the interior of Highclere Castle.

The castle's expansive park also plays an important role in the series, and even the bench where Lady Mary likes to sit is in the same spot.

Thank you for coming round the castle with me in a virtual fashion, and I hope you'll come and visit us for real as soon as you can.

Come on then.

Here we go.

Come on, Stella, bring me your present.

The oldest castle in Germany.

A castle where real bears live.

And a fairy tale castle.

Hartenfels, Albrecthsburg and Moritzburg are Saxony's most beautiful castles.

Surrounded by vineyards, the city of Meißen is home to just under 30,000 people.

Even from afar, Albrechtsburg castle and the cathedral catch your eye.

Hannah Hummel meets with castle manager, Uwe Michel.

In terms of history, this is the most significant place in the state of Saxony.

The story began in the year 929.

King Henry the First of Germany captured this hill and built a fortress.

In the course of history, the building was developed further.

We're standing in Germany's first castle, built in 1471 by Arnold von Westfalen.

To help Hannah Hummel imagine castle life back then, Uwe Michel shows her the Histopad.

The tablet takes her back in time through augmented reality and historical reconstructions in 3D.

The banqueting hall was where feasts were served and where the royal household and their company ate.

The Histopad recreates that.

We can see precisely what they had and in which order the various courses were eaten.

It's all been researched.

So you can see the various specialties of the time.

Squirrel was a particular highlight.

We head up a floor to learn about another chapter in the castle's history.

For 153 years Albrechtsburg Castle was basically a factory, the production site of the famous Meissen porcelain.

In 1710, the castle was transformed into Europe's first porcelain manufacturer.

Here we can see Albrechtsburgh Castle on the top of the fortress hill.

There were these watch stations, all to ensure that the formula for making porcelain was kept secret for as long as possible.

And from Germany's oldest castle, we make our way to Northern Saxony, to a city with significant history.

Torgau was once the political center of the Reformation.

The Renaissance-era Hartenfels Castle stands on the banks of the River Elbe.

Here, Hannah Hummel meets the photographer Daniel Köhler Hi.

Hi.

This looks as if its your castle!

Not quite, but I do like it here.

Usually he's out and about in Leipzig with his camera.

He shares his photos with his 90,000 Instagram followers, depicting individual people, cityscapes and modern architecture.

But I also find classical places like the castle interesting.

There's a lot of history that has a certain charm too.

First, we look at the castle's architectural highlight the famous spiral staircase.

It's almost 20m high without a central supporting column.

It was made of Elbe sandstone almost 500 years ago.

A masterpiece of German architecture.

But there's more: The Torgau Castle Chapel was consecrated by Martin Luther himself in 1544.

After a brief detour through the courtyard, we find the castle's four-legged residents.

Bea, Benno and Jette live in the castle moat, in a species-appropriate habitat.

Keeping bears in the castle is a centuries-old tradition that survived to the present day.

And now we're headed to Moritzburg Castle near Dresden.

This impressively symmetrical structure dates back to the Baroque era.

A famous fairytale adaptation was filmed here: “Three wishes for Cinderella”.

The popular television film is being performed here as a musical, and Hannah Hummel meets the star of the piece, Sandra Maria Huimann.

It's an absolute dream role.

It wasn't until I got the part here that I realized how famous the film is.

People watch it three or even ten times at Christmas.

I was swept up by the hype.

Do you find it romantic?

Sure I do.

Also because of how it affects people.

We have a really mixed audience here.

Children and adults and both kids and grown ups love it.

Cinderella's lost shoe is how the prince finally finds her.

On the staircase of Moritzburg Castle.

There's a small reminder of that scene.

In real life, Moritzburg Castle was a hunting lodge and a summer residence for the Prince Electors of Saxony.

Portraits of them adorn the castle's interior.

And Augustus the Strong was one of Saxony's most famous rulers.

Albrechtsburg, Schloss Hartenfels and Moritzburg.

These three castles are definitely among the must see sights of Saxony.

This is Bran Castle in Romania, otherwise known as Dracula's Castle.

It's one of Romania's major landmarks and tourist destinations, located in the small town of Bran, some 200km north of the capital, Bucharest.

People flock here from all over the world to catch a glimpse into the gruesome world of vampires.

After a very long journey, I have finally arrived at Bran Castle here in Romania.

Now, this place boasts 640 years of history, but it is most well known as the home of Count Dracula, the blood sucking count of Transylvania.

Now, although I know this story is based on fiction, I have come well prepared.

I have my garlic to ward off any potential spirits and vampires and have my rosary just in case.

All right, let's discover this castle's history.

As I enter, I wonder if Count Dracula ever invited his victims to dine here.

So, Cristiana, tell me how much of the Dracula story is actually true and related to this castle?

Well, you know, in every legend, there is a small amount of truth.

While Dracula was a historical character, he really existed.

He was the prince of Wallachia, Vlad the Impaler, and not a very nice guy either.

Known for his bloody character and for his habit of impaling people.

So you see, he really existed.

And Bram Stoker, the Irish novelist that wrote the novel Dracula.

Heard about his story from a Hungarian teacher, a friend of his.

So he took our princes story and transform it into the one of the famous vampire.

But in fact, Stoker never visited Romania or Bran Castle.

His book is based on a description of the castle and an illustration available to him at the time.

But what about Vlad the Impaler?

Was he ever here during his reign of terror?

The castle does indeed have examples of medieval torture methods used back then.

So, Cristiano, what is this?

What am I looking at?

This is the Virgin... The Virgin.

The Virgin from Nurnburg.

This is one of the first mechanized torture instruments.

They were used on suspected witches, thieves, traitors and the like.

You have to be naked when you sit on it.

So.

Yeah.

So we don't want to do that either.

The real Dracula used torture to secure loyalty from his subjects.

One of his favorite methods for getting rid of his enemies was to impale them.

Let me introduce the real Dracula, Vlad the Impaler.

And what I can say about him is that for us, for the Romanian people, he's a hero.

And we are still waiting for him to come back.

Rumor has it he was only imprisoned in Bran Castle for a short time.

Vlad Dracula actually reigned from Targoviste, 100km south of Bran.

This is where the ruins of his court are located.

Not far from here in 1459, he infamously had several hundred enemies impaled in what is now known as the Sunday Feast.

Vlad was a ruler here who reigned a long time, this is about six years, and he lived here.

And behind us you can see the ruins of his palace.

But fact or fiction, it's Bran Castle and the story of Dracula the vampire that seemed to interest tourists the most.

You think it's scary here?

It's a bit scary.

Especially the torture room.

Maybe you have seen it.

That's the most scary thing in this castle.

And it owes its everlasting popularity to Bram Stoker.

So my tour of Bran Castle is coming to an end.

And my impression of this place is that it's really just full of history.

It's really not that scary.

Although I don't think I would want to be here after dark.

And just in case there are any evil spirits to ward off, I will keep this garlic necklace close at hand.

But it's time to say goodbye now from Dracula's castle.

And I make my way out of Bran before it gets dark, when the vampires begin their nightly activities.