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The Landshut Wedding
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The spectacular costumed festival, the
Landshut Wedding
(
Landshuter Hochzeit
) has its origins in the marriage of Georg, son of Duke Ludwig the Rich and Princess Jadwiga of Poland. It was a spectacular society affair: the Archbishop of Salzburg conducted the ceremony, while all the leading German and Polish nobles were present, including the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich III and his son, the future Maximilian I. Afterwards, the people of Landshut celebrated for a week at the expense of the bridegroom's father, and it is recorded that 40,000 chickens, 11,500 geese, 2700 lambs, nearly 700 pigs, 400 calves and over 300 oxen were consumed.
Needless to say, there is no such munificence in the modern re-creations of the event, which, with eyes firmly on the tourist market, have been moved from the original November date to high summer and go on for four weeks. Weekends are the best times to come: each Saturday at 9pm, the gathering of the guests is re-enacted, while at 2.30pm on Sundays, the wedding procession makes its way through the streets of the town, with a medieval-style tournament following at 4.30pm. Some two thousand participants are involved, each decked out in authentic reproductions of the costumes of the period. In addition to various impromptu events, there are also concerts of fifteenth-century music in the Stadtresidenz and Burg Trausnitz, while entertainments are held in the Rathaus; the latter are repeated on the evenings of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Held every four years, the next
performances
will occur in 2005. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Germany,
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