Gluecksburg

Glücksburg raised the castle that furnished Europe's thrones. Schloss Glücksburg, the gleaming white water castle rising foursquare from its mirror-still lake, is one of northern Europe's most important Renaissance castles — and the cradle of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, the dynasty that came to occupy the thrones of Denmark and Norway, gave kings to Greece and, through Prince Philip, the consort line of the British royal house. The founding duke's motto — "Gott gebe Glück mit Frieden", God grant happiness with peace — gave castle and town their name; the state rooms, chapel and ancestral portraits receive visitors where reigning houses still occasionally gather.

The town beneath the towers is the Baltic at its gentlest: a seaside resort on the Flensburg Fjord, Denmark visible across the water, with a beach promenade, a fjord-water swimming pontoon and the yacht harbours that make the firth one of Germany's sailing paradises. The Rosarium — a celebrated rose garden descended from ducal horticulture — perfumes the summer, and the beech woods of the Friedeholz reach almost to the shore.

Fördesteig walkers, ferry day-trippers to Danish Sønderborg and winter storm-watchers keep the seasons occupied; the castle keeps the centuries. A white castle, a blue fjord, a motto about happiness: Glücksburg delivers on its name with dynastic thoroughness.