Rosenberg Castle ruins

En un regard

Le château en bref

The ruins of Rosenberg stand on the eastern crown of a small hill above the hamlet of Burghalden, north of Herisau, in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden. The castle was founded by the knights of Rorschach, in the service of the Abbot of St Gall (attested from 1176), around 1150 according to some sources, around 1200 according to others; Egolf von Rorschach took the name Rosenberg there, a name his family retained after his death in 1222. The site comprised a keep-palas measuring 19 × 20 m, with walls more than 3 m thick at the base, storage and production buildings probably on the western crown, and a primitive entrance to the south-west, supplemented in the 14th century by a ground-level gate. Attacked and set on fire in 1403 during the uprising of the Appenzellers against the Abbot of St Gall, it was probably never rebuilt. Half of the estate passed in 1415 to the Holy Spirit Hospital of St Gall, the other half to Herisau, and the abbey owned the whole by 1461. Excavated and consolidated in 1936–1937, the ruin has yielded weapons, iron tools and roof tiles; it now belongs to the Bürgergemeinde of Herisau.