The Château Saint-Léon is a former castle in the commune of Eguisheim in the Haut-Rhin département of France.
History
The castle was long believed, mistakenly, to date from the 11th or 12th century. This was because of historians relying on texts actually describing another castle, the Château de Haut Eguisheim, and the birthplace in 1002 of Pope Leo IX (Saint-Léon in French). In fact, the castle's octagonal plan and central keep, its masonry and, most importantly, its similarity to other castles (Château du Burgstall at Guebwiller and the Château de Wangen) date it to the first part of the 13th century.
The castle was built by the Counts of Eguisheim and taken over by the Bishop of Strasbourg during the 13th century. An episcopal bailiff occupied it until the French Revolution (1789). The enceinte was surrounded by a moat which was filled in by the 18th century. Houses built in the castle courtyard and against its walls were destroyed by a fire in 1877 which also damaged the castle - it was left in runs for many years.
In 1885, it was bought by the Bishop of Strasbourg through the mediation of a M. Stumpf who wanted to build a chapel dedicated to Saint Leo. The remains of the keep were destroyed and the chapel built in its place, the works being carried out by the architect of historic monuments, Charles Winkler. The chapel was completed in 1895. Winkler also restored the residence at the south of the site which had been rebuilt, with mullioned windows in the 16th century. He added a staircase turret and a neo-Renaissance balcony.
It has been listed since 1903 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture.

Château de Saint-Léon-Pfalz

Account

by category

Login

Name

by region

Title

Name in English

The Château du Hohlandsbourg or Hohlandsberg is a ruined castle in the commune of Wintzenheim, near Colmar, in the Haut-Rhin département of France. It is open to the public between Easter and 11 November.
History
The construction of the castle, on the order of the Provost of Colmar, Siegfried de Gundolsheim, dates from 1279. The site, 620 m above sea level, allowed for surveillance of Colmar and its region. In 1281, the townspeople of Colmar revolted and set fire to the castle with the help of the Bailiff, Otton d'Ochenstein.
The castle came under the control of the Ensisheims before being given in 1410 as a fiefdom to the Ribeaupierres (fr), then Counts of Lupfen, who enlarged it. In the 16th century, the castle belonged to Lazarus von Schwendi, general of the Holy Roman Empire, who, it is said, brought Tokay vines from Hungary to Alsace. He enlarged and strengthened the castle.
With Alsace becoming French at the end of the Thirty Years' War, the castle welcomed troops who blew it up in 1637 to prevent it falling into the hands of an Austrian army.
It has been listed since 1840 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. The castle was restored during the 1990s to become a cultural and historical centre.

Château du Hohlandsbourg

The Château de Kaysersberg is a ruined castle in the commune of Kaysersberg in the Haut-Rhin département of France.
History
The castle was built for Albin Woelflin, imperial bailiff for Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, around 1220. The site was acquired in 1227 by the lords of Horbourg and Ribeaupierre. It had an important strategic role as it allowed the Empire to close off one of the routes across the Vosges Mountains towards Lorraine. The circular keep is the oldest part of the castle and one of the first of this type in the upper Rhine valley. It was designed at the same time as the keep at the Château de Pflixbourg. The first curtain wall, which included the keep, was replaced after 1261 by a wall enclosing the keep, according to a contemporary plan, which allowed an uniterrupted circuit of the walls and strengthened defences on the side likely to be attcaked. In the 14th century, the castle was the residenece of the imperial provost or bailiff. Following a fire, the enceinte was raised to 4 m. In the second half of the 15th century, the castle defences were modernised in response to developments in artillery and firearms; the crenels were closed with wooden shutters, the merlons were equipped with firing slits and the round walk was completely covered. In this period, the castle was merely a sub-bailliage and personnel were heavily reduced. During the German Peasants' War (1524/5), the castle was besieged. It was restored by Lazarre de Schwendi in 1583.
According to archaeological excavations and studies, the castle was abandoned at the end of the 16th century. After the French Revolution, it was declared a national asset and sold to François Joseph Boecklin de Boecklinsau, who planted vines, and later passed to the Bastard family.
Description
The castle is largely built from granite. It stands at an altitude of 295 m (approx. 975 ft) and dominates from 50m the north side of the town. The castle has a triangular plan dominated by the circular keep in the highest point. The keep is 11 m (36 ft) in diameter with walls 4.42 m (14 1⁄2 ft) thick. The original parapet has been kept to a height of 0.55 m, with the crenels and merlons restored. The spiral staircase is concrete. Access is to the first floor, through an arched doorway. The spacious third floor served as a storeroom and provided access to the platform which was originally covered. The keep had a purely military function. The main residential buildings were situated against the east curtain wall. On the other side, towards the town, was a large lower courtyard. The entrance to the castle, in the east, was by an arched doorway with a barbican; to the left is a cruciform cannon opening and a circular firing hole. The castle's enceinte is linked to the town's by curtain walls with a round walk.
The Château de Kaysersberg has been listed as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture since 1841.

Château de Kaysersberg

The Château de Saint-Ulrich (also known as the Château de Grand-Ribeaupierre) is one of three castles (with the Girsberg and the Haut-Ribeaupierre) which overlooks the commune of Ribeauvillé in the Haut-Rhin département of France. It is situated at an altitude of 528 m.
The present name of the site is from the chapel dedicated to Saint Ulrich of Augsburg which is found in the castle. Medieval texts never gave the present name - the castle had the name of the Rappolstein dynasty (or Ribeaupierre in the French style).
History
From the 11th to the 16th centuries, the castle was the principal residence of the powerful lords of Ribeaupierre. There must have been another castle on the same site which belonged in 1114 to the Bishop of Basle. It was occupied militarily by Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor, who used it as a strongpoint in his war against the Eguisheims. It was then returned to the Bishop of Basle who restored it to the Ribeaupierres. Anselme II de Ribeaupierre, who chased the other members of the family from the castle, successfully survived two sieges, in 1287 by Rudolph I of Germany and, in 1293, his successor Adolf. A celebrated crimal, Dame Cunégonde d'Hungersheim, was incarcerated in the keep and tried to escape with the aid of a guard.
The castle is a very fine example of the military architecture of Alsace in the Middle Ages, including a keep erected in the 12th century and a residence with chimney of the 12th century. In the 13th century, the salle des chevaliers (knights' hall) was decorated with nine beautiful windows in the Romanesque style which can still be seen. In the same period (1435), the chapel dedicated to Saint Ulrich, Bishop of Augsburg, was built.
The Ribeaupierre family left this castle in the 16th century for a Renaissance-style mansion (the present school in Ribeauvillé). The castle was dismantled during the Thirty Years' War.
The castle today
The visible remains date from several epochs:
12th century : Square keep and the corps de logis
13th century : Salle des chevaliers, and the residential tower
14th century : Barbican and outer enceinte
15th century: Chapel (Saint-Ulrich)
The Château de Saint-Ulrich has been listed since 1841 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture.

Château de Saint-Ulrich

Today, Reichenberg Castle belongs to the Oppenweiler community. It was built at the beginning of the thirteenth century by the margrave Hermann V from Baden. For more than 700 years, the Romanic castle complex has remained completely intact. Many parts of this unique castle are open to the public, for instance, the keep, the chapel and the outdoor areas of the castle walls.
For the last 120 years, Reichenberg Castle has also housed diaconal facilities; and, today, the Paulinenpflege Winnenden organization looks after people with disabilities and mental disorders there. In their tours, Gisela Weigle, Ute Klaperoth-Spohr, Christina Rieger and Wolfgang Schneider relate the castle’s history and have many stories to tell about it.
https://www.schwaebischerwald.com/index.php?id=803

Château de Reichenberg

The Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg is a medieval castle located in the commune of Orschwiller in the Bas-Rhin département of Alsace, France, Located in the Vosges mountains just west of Sélestat, situated in a strategic area on a rocky spur overlooking the Upper Rhine Plain, it was used by successive powers from the Middle Ages until the Thirty Years' War when it was abandoned. From 1900 to 1908 it was rebuilt at the behest of the German kaiser Wilhelm II. Today it is a major tourist site, attracting more than 500,000 visitors a year.
History
The Buntsandstein rock was first mentioned as Stophanberch (Staufenberg) in a 774 deed issued by the Frankish king Charlemagne. Again certified in 854, it was then a possession of the French Basilica of St Denis and the site of a monastery.
Middle Ages
It is not known when a first castle was built. However, a Burg Staufen (Castrum Estufin) is documented in 1147, when the monks complained to King Louis VII of France about its unlawful construction by the Hohenstaufen Duke Frederick II of Swabia. Frederick's younger brother Conrad III had been elected King of the Romans in 1138, to be succeeded by Frederick's son Frederick Barbarossa in 1152, and by 1192 the castle was called Kinzburg (Königsburg, "King's Castle").
In the early thirteenth century, the fortification passed from the Hohenstaufen family to the dukes of Lorraine, who entrusted it to the local Rathsamhausen knightly family and the Lords of Hohenstein, who held the castle until the fifteenth century. As the Hohensteins allowed some robber barons to use the castle as a hideout, and their behaviour began to exasperate the neighbouring rulers, in 1454 it was occupied by Elector Palatine Frederick I and in 1462 was set ablaze by the unified forces of the cities of Colmar, Strasbourg, and Basel.
In 1479, the Habsburg emperor Frederick III granted the castle ruins in fief to the Counts of Thierstein, who rebuilt them with a defensive system suited to the new artillery of the time. When in 1517 the last Thierstein died, the castle became a reverted fief and again came into the possession of the Habsburg emperor of the day, Maximilian I. In 1633, during the Thirty Years' War in which Catholics forces fought Protestants, the Imperial castle was besieged by Protestant Swedish forces. After a 52-day siege, the castle was burned and looted by the Swedish troops. For several hundred years it was left unused, and the ruins became overgrown by the forest. Various romantic poets and artists were inspired by the castle during this time.
19th century renovation
The ruins had been listed as a monument historique of the Second French Empire since 1862 and were purchased by the township of Sélestat (or Schlettstadt) three years later. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 the region was incorporated into the German Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine, and in 1899 the citizens granted what was left of the castle to the German emperor Wilhelm II. Wilhelm wished to create a castle lauding the qualities of Alsace in the Middle Ages and more generally of German civilization stretching from Hohkönigsburg in the west to (likewise restored) Marienburg Castle in the east. He also hoped the restoration would reinforce the bond of Alsatians with Germany, as they had only recently been incorporated into the newly established German Empire. The management of the restoration of the fortifications was entrusted to the architect Bodo Ebhardt, a proven expert on the reconstruction of medieval castles. Work proceeded from 1900 to 1908. On May 13, 1908, the restored Hohkönigsburg was inaugurated in the presence of the Emperor. In an elaborate re-enactment ceremony, a historic cortege entered the castle, under a torrential downpour.
Ebhart's aim was to rebuild it, as near as possible, as it was on the eve of the Thirty Years' War. He relied heavily on historical accounts but, occasionally lacking information, he had to improvise some parts of the stronghold. For example, the Keep tower is now reckoned to be about 14 metres too tall. Wilhelm II, who regularly visited the construction site via a specially built train station in nearby Saint-Hippolyte, also encouraged certain modifications that emphasised a Romantic nostalgia for Germanic civilization. For example, the main dining hall has a higher roof than it did at the time, and links between the Hohenzollern family and the Habsburg rulers of the Holy Roman Empire are emphasized. The Emperor wanted to legitimise the House of Hohenzollern at the head of the Second Empire, and to assure himself as worthy heir of the Hohenstaufens and the Habsburgs.
The castle today
After World War I, the French state confiscated the castle in accordance with the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.
It has been listed since 1862 and classified since 1993 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2007, ownership was transferred to the Bas-Rhin département. Today, it is one of the most famous tourist attractions in the region.
For many years it was considered fashionable in France to sneer at the castle because of its links to the German emperor. Many considered it to be nothing more than a fairy tale castle similar to Neuschwanstein. However, in recent years many historians have established that, although it is not a completely accurate reconstruction, it is at least interesting for what it shows about Wilhelm II's romantic nationalist ideas of the past and the architect's work. Indeed, Bodo Ebhardt restored the castle following a close study of the remaining walls, archives and other fortified castles built at the same period.
Parts of the 1937 film La Grande Illusion by Jean Renoir were shot at Haut-Kœnigsbourg.