Turmhölzle

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Turmhölzle is the remains of a small spur castle perched at about 620 m above sea level on a southern spur of the Hohe Möhr, east of the village of Raitbach (town of Schopfheim). The rocky promontory, steep on all sides except towards the mountain, offered a naturally defended position above the Wiese valley. The present name, which simply evokes the "small wood of the tower", is a late toponym; the land registers of the abbey of St Blasien in the fifteenth century refer to the area under the name Fernegg, which could be the original designation. No charter directly documents the life of the castle: it is assumed that it was held by ministerials in order to consolidate the abbey's landed lordship in this area. Excavations carried out by school groups in 1981 uncovered the foundations of a square keep with walls about 2.5 m thick, fragments of a curtain wall, and a residential building abutting the west side. The whole complex, surrounded by ditches, is one of the most telling examples of early castle-building in the southern Black Forest and can be visited freely in the forest.