Castalia II

'Tis my favorite Utopian Fantasy that the castles and palaces bequeathed us by our feudal history be used as orphanages and boarding schools.  Linderhof, for example--not to mention Neuschwanstein and Schloss Herrenchiemsee--would be a fine place for Bavarian kids to take swimming and riding lessons, study French and Italian, play soccer, listen to concerts of Old Music, receive delegations of foreign students, learn to dance the gavotte, and, yes, if they want, play video games and look up smut on the Internet.

Normal, bourgeois citizens of Bavaria, and tourists from elsewhere, might visit and hang out just as they always have done, even in the days when a real, live König was in residence, with valets in livery, and with pathways marked off with velvet ropes, to shush them and guide them around so that they don't obtrude or interfere or get in the way, and yet they might get a true sense of the idyllic life in the castle, such as you can only really experience when the castle is occupied by someone who has a divine right to live there.