It is one of the most mythologised forests in the world. The Brothers Grimm collected many of their most enduring tales from the communities that lived in and around it. The forest they wrote into those stories — dark, deep, full of transformative encounters — is not a fiction. It is an accurate description of what this woodland actually feels like to move through.

Geography and Geology

The Black Forest stretches approximately 160 kilometres from Pforzheim in the north to Waldshut-Tiengen in the south, covering around 6,000 square kilometres of southwestern Germany. It forms the eastern edge of the Upper Rhine Plain — a rift valley that separates the Black Forest massif from the Vosges Mountains of France directly across the Rhine. The two ranges were once a single geological formation pulled apart by tectonic activity approximately 35 million years ago, producing the Rhine Graben that the modern Rhine now occupies.

The Northern Black Forest is lower, characterised by rounded hills and pine-dominated forests. The Southern Black Forest is higher and geologically older — granite and gneiss bedrock that creates more dramatic relief, with the range's highest point, the Feldberg, reaching 1,493 metres.

Flora and Fauna

Norway spruce and silver fir dominate the upper elevations, with European beech prevalent in lower slopes and valleys. Wildflower meadows in clearings support dozens of orchid species and rare alpine plants. Red deer, roe deer, wild boar, and — increasingly — Eurasian lynx inhabit the forest. The river systems originating here — the Danube rises on the eastern slopes — support brown trout populations of exceptional quality.

Culture and Craft

Cuckoo clocks, which originated here in the early 18th century, remain a living industry — dozens of workshops in Triberg, Furtwangen, and Schönwald still produce them by hand. The half-timbered buildings of the valley towns, with their steep pitched roofs designed for heavy snow loads, are among the most photographed vernacular architecture in Germany. The food culture is equally distinctive: cold-smoked ham aged in farmhouses, hand-rolled pasta dishes, and a wine culture in the Baden region that produces some of Germany's finest Pinot Noir.

Neuschwanstein Castle

No trip through Bavaria in autumn is complete without Neuschwanstein. Commissioned by King Ludwig II of Bavaria in 1869 and built into the sheer cliffs above the village of Hohenschwangau, the castle was conceived as a personal refuge and a tribute to the operas of Richard Wagner. Ludwig never saw it completed — he died under mysterious circumstances in 1886, just days after being declared mentally unfit to rule. Construction continued for another 17 years after his death.

The castle sits at approximately 800 metres elevation on a rugged outcrop above the Pöllat Gorge, with the Alpsee lake visible in the valley below. Its white limestone façade, romanesque towers, and position against the forested Alps make it one of the most photographed buildings in the world. Walt Disney is said to have drawn inspiration from Neuschwanstein for Sleeping Beauty Castle — a legacy that has made the original both more and less itself. In autumn, the surrounding forests turn amber and the castle emerges from the foliage in a way that the summer crowds rarely permit you to see properly. Early morning, before the first tour buses, is the only time the place genuinely resembles what Ludwig imagined.

The Photography

I photographed both locations in autumn — when the combination of amber foliage, lower light, and reduced crowds allows a quality of image that summer does not. For the Black Forest, overcast days produced the even, revealing light that a dense forest requires. For Neuschwanstein, early morning mist in the valley below and direct light on the limestone facade were the conditions worth waiting for.