Travel Guide Coldiz

Colditz, located halfway between Leipzig and Dresden, is a municipality of 5,000 inhabitants, located on a fortified hill overlooking the river, in a particularly rural section of the Mulde river. With its group of white buildings, towers and church, this village has a very picturesque effect. The castle of this locality is the main attraction. It is a jewel of the Saxon Renaissance, originally an 11th century fortress, which dominates the valley from its imposing silhouette. Although it is famous throughout Germany - and even as far away as England - it is above all for its contemporary history that the castle is known. It housed a prison for allied soldiers (English, Poles, French and Dutch among others) during the Second World War. A prison that is subjected to numerous and repeated escapes by officers, particularly British officers, who had no intention of languishing in its jails.... The English film Reach for the Sky, released in 1956, is a biographical epic that recounts this episode, through the adventures of Royal Air Force soldier Douglas Bader, who was imprisoned in Colditz. In the 1970s, the American-British television series Colditz had in turn staged this war event in the form of 28 50-minute episodes. When fiction meets reality, the audience is there. These escaped officers had dug multiple tunnels here, which visitors hurry to discover as they walked through the castle.