Enter the grounds of the Landgräfliches Schloss (Count’s Castle), and you will notice the coat of arms of the Counts of Hesse-Homburg. Passing under the magnificent Lebanon cedar, a huge tree in the courtyard planted in 1820, you reach the steps of the actual castle. The original medieval castle was rebuilt as a Baroque palace for Count Friedrich II in 1680, and housed many counts of Hesse-Homburg thereafter, but gained major notoriety when Count Friedrich IV married English princess Elizabeth and the Heilquellen (healing springs) were discovered. Elizabeth expanded and modernised the castle, bringing in an aristocratic love of the neo-classical French influenced Biedermeier furniture, which is characterised by its use of pale woods with the occasional ivory inlay, usually depicting architectural motifs. By 1871, the German Empire was under the control of Kaiser Wilhelm, who, with his wife Auguste Victoria, sealed the fate of the little spa town as a small cultural centre of Europe. He has a separate wing of the castle that you can see on the guided tour. The tour is given daily in German, but if you call ahead, arrangements can be made in English. Also famous is the 48m high Weisse Turm (White Tower), which has been the symbol of Bad Homburg for centuries, immortalised in poetry by Goethe. Take a walk through the palace gardens, which are superbly maintained and have beautiful cobblestone lined paths, with a large lake as the focal point in the centre. As you exit the palace gardens, head toward the Ritter-von-Marx Bridge, and you will see the charming Dietigheim settlement to your right and left, a small village that grew into a community of craftsmen and is enclosed by a fortified wall. It is a picture perfect gathering of medieval German homes and gardens.