To Colditz, for a great escape

THE first big surprise about Colditz is how easy it is to get to. The Nazis reckoned it was the perfect place for Allied prisoners hellbent on escaping, since it was more than 400 miles from any Allied or neutral border.

Yet it's less than 30 miles from Leipzig, one of Eastern Germany's most lively and accessible cities, so you can easily spend a weekend in Leipzig and do a day trip to Colditz.

The second surprise is that the former POW camp is virtually unknown in Germany. Despite its legendary reputation throughout the English-speaking world, hardly any Germans have even heard of it, and this anonymity has preserved its austere appeal. Arriving there by bus, about an hour from Leipzig's smartly renovated railway station, the sinister Schloss Colditz (castle) looms over the surrounding countryside, dwarfing the little town beneath it, much as it must have done for captured soldiers arriving here during the Second World War.

Despite its bleak wartime legacy, the village of Colditz is remarkably quaint.

With a population of just 5,000, it remains largely untouched by the dramatic upheavals of the past 100 years.

There are a few homely hotels and restaurants, huddled around an attractive market square, but the view is dominated by the castle. A short, steep walk takes you through a robust gatehouse, into a claustrophobic cobbled courtyard where several hundred Allied soldiers plotted their incredible escapes and played volleyball.

For British visitors, the castle and the camp are more or less synonymous, but the history of Schloss Colditz stretches further back. Founded in 1046, it has been destroyed and rebuilt twice. After a few hundred years as a hunting lodge, it became a mental asylum. After the war it became a hospital, then an old people's home. The last patients left in 1996. It is now open to the public and attempts are being made to turn it into an attraction to rival Alcatraz, the island prison in San Francisco Bay where, among others, Al Capone was incarcerated.

Some of it has been beautifully restored, but there is a lot of renovation to be done. There are plans for a hotel and an extensive museum reflecting its history as a POW camp.

There's already a compact display about the war years in one corner of the castle. The exhibits are fascinating, from a tunnel dug by French POWs to a secret radio hideout so well devised that it remained hidden until 1993.

There's a fake German uniform finally unearthed in 1997, complete with buttons and insignia made out of cardboard, linoleum and silver foil. And a homemade glider that was concealed within the rafters, plus some surprisingly fine landscape paintings by British POWs.

A modest shop sells souvenirs, but the best thing about Colditz is its secluded and eerie atmosphere, which scarcely seems to have changed since the end of the Second World War.

It is worth a visit before it becomes an established tourist attraction, but you will get around the castle quickly, and even though the town is pleasant, there's not an awful lot to see. Yet Leipzig is an unexpected treat.

There are museums devoted to two of the city's most famous composers, Bach and Mendelssohn, plus a riveting exhibition about the Stasi, East Germany's notorious secret police force, housed in the creepy former Stasi HQ. This is also where Bach played the organ, and protesters gathered in 1989, sparking the revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall.

Yet although Leipzig is full of history, it feels like a thrusting city, and the handsome arcades in the centre are packed with fashionable shops and bars.

For much of the 20th century, Colditz and Leipzig were places that people couldn't wait to escape from. In the 21st century, most human traffic looks set to travel the other way.

. Colditz With Love, starring James Fox and Timothy West, will be screened on ITV on 27 and 28 March.

WAY TO GO

William Cook travelled to Germany as a guest of the German National Tourist Office (020 7317 0908) and Lufthansa (0870 8377 747) and stayed at Victor's Residenz-Hotel (00 49 341 68660). Doubles from E110.

Lufthansa flies daily to Leipzig from Heathrow and London City via Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Dusseldorf or Cologne.

Returns from Pounds 208.70.

(c)2005. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.