zillierbach

Is that a "street" -- or a canal ... or both?

Should be both: some kind of unpaved street (a carriage is moving round the corner) and some kind of canal. /Anna B

The creek is called the Zillierbach, and the view is not far from the Schöne Ecke (Beautiful Corner); in fact, the houses in the center may be part of that street.

xiphophilos: Thank you so much for the information! According to the map, the narrow street seen on the photo above should be called Schöne Ecke as well - do you agree? /Anna B.

Yes, that's right, the street is called Schöne Ecke too. The area still looks very similar today. At the time the picture was taken the castle was the seat of Otto von Stolberg-Wernigerode, a childhood friend of Bismarck and then the Vice Chancellor of the German Reich. Otto commissioned a huge refashioning of the castle into the mock-medieval dream castle that you see. This remodeling was completed in 1885, so the picture may have been taken shortly thereafter (www.schloss-wernigerode.de/htm/de/html/SchlossGeschichte....).

nice pgoto.

Why this picture havn't colour?

The picture is digitized from a black and white original print from the 1880s. Colour photography was not developed by then. Some original prints from those days have a blue or yellowish tint because of different techniques of printing from black and white negatives. /Anna B.

love it