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Outside the South-West side of the Castle Many photographs have been taken of the western aspect of the Castle, as featured in this website's main logo. Photos have also been taken of the courtyards of the Castle, some of the northern side, plenty of the southern [moat] aspect, and even recently my photos of the eastern and northern sides of the Castle from the Park. In March 2008, I was informed by a 'Personality', who lives in Colditz town, that nobody has ever really published photos of the south-western outside part of the Castle, round from the entrance bridge and gatehouse. So the next morning, we arose early to get those photos. Here they are. Firstly, this picture is taken from just to the left of the outer gatehouse, facing north along the western side of the Castle. I had to kind of half-climb the wall to get this one, but I wanted this picture so that I could put the rest of the pictures into context. 
To the right of the picture is the outer gatehouse, then the entrance ramp/bridge, then the inner gatehouse with the clock tower above [with the green scaffolding cover on it]. To the left of this is the brown-coloured Expeditionsgebaude, which from this angle looks as if it abuts the Kanzleihaus to the north, and almost at the left of this picture. There is, however, a connecting wall between the two buildings, as we will see. Below the Expeditionsgebaude and Kanzleihaus, to the West [left] of the picture, there are kind of gardens/allotments, and just below the white Kanzleihaus building you can see the south end wall of the garden below the Western rampart. We now proceed into the dry moat, and before proceeding under the entrance ramp/bridge, this is the outer gatehouse; view direction is approximately south-east: 
Going under the entrance ramp/bridge, and looking back up to the south-east to view the outer gatehouse again from below: 
The next picture shows the view looking up at the clock tower, which was still under scaffolding at the time the picture was taken. The building below the tower is the outer gatehouse, and the entrance ramp can be seen to the right. 
Here is the inner gatehouse from slightly closer in: 
Standing in the same place, but looking more northwards now, we see the Expeditionsgebaude building with the Kanzleihaus and the end of the terrace garden behind: 
The terrace garden I mention is the terrace below the western rampart; this rampart being the sloping roadway that connects the outer courtyard with the inner courtyard. The garden is nowadays accessible only via a locked gate below the former guardhouse; however it looks as if at one time the garden was accessible from the gardens we took these current photos from. Consider the bricked-up archway and steps; I'm not sure how long these have been bricked up, but there must have been a way through there at one time.  
The pair of pictures below are presented in order to put the 'terrace garden' into perspective with regard to the Kanzleihaus. In each picture you can see the majestic windows of the Saalhaus [theatre block], and the roofs of the Beamtenhaus [guardhouse] and the Kellerhaus [cellar house] just peeking over the terrace garden wall. 
Now for a couple of views back towards the south-east and the Expeditionsgebaude.  
That buiding is joined to the Kanzleihaus by an odd little building which appears in some ways simply to be a curtain wall; however there must be attics in there as evidenced by the windows. Here's the building from the other side, within the outer courtyard: 
I'm pretty sure that those attics were once used by the prisoners to try to gain access to the buildings of the outer courtyard - I think the Germans filled the attics there with barbed wire to prevent further access once they found their store rooms were being burgled.... Finally, for orientation purposes, here is a plan of the Castle showing where I took the photos in this section; the camera positions used are indicated by red lines and blobs, and the building names and Castle areas are identified by the red letters C: Cellar block [Kellerhaus] B: Beamtenhaus [Guardhouse]; S: Saalhaus [Theatre block]; TG: Terrace Garden; K: Kanzleihaus; E: Expeditionsgebaude; R: Rampart. Note that North is to the left of the plan. 
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