The Lech tumbles through the mountains in a narrow, rocky bed. It pours onto the Bavarian plateau at the town of Füssen and turns north. In times not so long past, where it met level terrain, it spread out into a braided river, flowing around narrow islands, as it meandered toward the Danube.

During the time of Ludwig II, from the bridge behind the old Hohenschwangau ruins—and later the castle construction site—the view of the plateau beyond was not unlike the view today. The braided river Lech ran through the far half along the length of today’s Forggensee.

The Bayerische Wasserkraftwerke (Bavarian waterworks) dammed the Lech river near Roßhaupten /rose-HOWP-ten/ in 1954 to form Germany’s largest reservoir and fifth largest lake. Its purpose: to regulate runoff from spring rain and snowmelt, and so prevent flooding, and to generate electricity. It is the second barrage on the Lech. The first is at Füssen, where the river skirts the town. These are part of a system of more than two dozen barrages that regulate water flow between the Alps and the Danube.

The reservoir is called the Forggensee. See, in German, means lake, and Forggen is the name of a village that now lies beneath the lake’s surface. Several families were moved out of the village before it was drowned. Modern settlements also drowned were Deutenhausen and parts of Weidach (in Füssen), Brunnen (Schwangau), Dietringen, and Dürracker. These are accompanied at lake bottom by ancient sites: the ruins of a Roman villa and a few kilometers of a Roman road, the Via Claudia Augusta.

“Fascination Forggensee” (Faszination Forggensee)

To catch spring rains and melt water, the lake is partially drained in the winter. With the water at its lowest annual levels in March and April, historian Magnus Peresson guides tours into the muddy lake bed. He shows the exposed features, including the Roman ruins and foundations of homesteads, and he tells stories about the people who lived there.

I followed Peresson’s tour last April. Not only a historian, Peresson is also an architect. Walking among washed-out ruins, he points to a rectangle where walls once stood. “That was the kitchen,” he says, “see that pipe?” And where a wide wooden timber lay level with the mud, “That was the threshold to the stable.”

Look for “Faszination Forggensee” led by Magnus Peresson at Allgäu Schlosspark.de in late winter and early spring into April.

“Sunken Hamlets” (Versunkene Weiler)

At the moment in Schwangau is an exhibit about the submerged villages, now 70 years gone. Curators Ernst Walz and Christine Velle put together an impressive display of photographs, graphics, newspaper articles, and accompanying text that show the area as it was before and during the dam’s construction.

You can see “Sunken Hamlets” at the Schlossbrauhaus in Schwangau, Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays, 17:00-20:00, until 5 November, and 1 November 14:00-17:00.

I have mentioned before the legend of the Neuschwanstein Dungeons. The dungeons are more easily fabricated in our imaginations than in reality. If they exist, I have identified three ways that we might enter into the unexplored depths beneath a mad king’s castle.

Archway

The legend itself points to the tall dark archway, bottom center at the rear of the structure. If the narrow windows above it are four feet in height, the opening may be about ten feet wide and some 40 feet high.

Waterfall Cave

Off the south side of Marienbrücke (opposite the castle), directly below, the Pöllat River falls down an eroded rock formation. Just to the cascade’s left, a cavern gapes. The spelunker’s entrance would be a winding passage, descending beneath the river and leading, one would think, to the dungeon’s lower levels.

Cellar

The two previous points of ingress are difficult to access. The first requires a hazardous climb up from the Pöllat Gorge. The second, a climb down into a flooded cavern. Because the gorge trail is currently closed to the public, braving either might earn an encounter with local authorities.

The third entrance is less perilous. Here, we have still to avoid the authorities, but at the base of the north facade, to the left of a sally port, a simple wooden door looks like it might open into a root cellar. More likely, it’s a service entrance to the sewer. A sewer entrance to the dungeon is an old fantasy trope. It’s a trope for a reason.

Warning

The legend is clear on the point: no one has ever come out of the Neuschwanstein dungeons alive. If they exist, dungeons are dangerous places.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, Celtic tribes spread out of Bohemia onto the Alpine Foreland and up into the river valleys of the southern mountains. These people became known as the Baiuvarii /by-you-var-ee/, which may have meant “people from Bohemia.” From this word we get Bayern in German and in English Bavaria.

The Baiuvarii were a fierce and independent people. The tribes were led by chieftains. Their spiritual leaders were druids. The druids were wise men and women who served as legal authorities and judges, lore keepers, healers, and advisers to the chieftains.

The druids were also sorcerers. They drew power from nature: from rush of wind, from steady of stone, from fall of water, and from heat of flame.

Then came the Franks from the east. They dominated the Baiuvarii and set up the first dukes to rule over them. The Franks feared the power of the druids and, so, tried to repress them. To defend themselves, the druids called up from the earth a great dragon.

The dragon was big as a mountain. On wide wings, it swooped in the air, its scales were hard as rocks, it moved quick as a river, and it breathed great gouts of fire. The dragon defended the druids against the Franks.

In the 8th century, Charlemagne came. Charlemagne fought the dragon and subdued it. He was then crowned emperor in the year 800. His son Louis the Pious appointed the first king of Bavaria. There followed a series of six Bavarian kings in the 9th century. These kings were fabulously wealthy, the next more wealthy than the previous.

Now the dragon had been subdued but not defeated. And when the last of the six kings died, the dragon collected the treasure of the Bavarian kings and brought it to the Alpsee. It dropped the treasure to the bottom of the lake. The dragon then lay down beside the lake, with the Crown of Bavaria upon its head, and slept.

Do you see the dragon…?

I may have made up parts of this story. Druids are commonly associated with the Celts earlier in history. We don’t hear so much about them later. This is perhaps due to two reasons: one, it was first the Romans, then later Christian conquerors, who repressed the druids for fear of their power, and two, in compliance with their own customs, the druids didn’t write.

I’m sure I’ve exaggerated the Bavarian kings’ wealth, and as far as history is concerned, druids did not call dragons. Some of us know better.