Weisswasserstelz Castle Ruin

En un regard

Le château en bref

The ruins of Weisswasserstelz (Weißwasserstelz, also known as Neu- or Hochwasserstelz) stand on a hill about 340 m high overlooking the German right bank of the High Rhine, opposite Kaiserstuhl, in the territory of Hohentengen am Hochrhein. The castle was not on the island: it was its neighbour Schwarzwasserstelz, now vanished, that occupied an islet in the river, while Rotwasserstelz rises further east. Together, these three strongholds controlled the roads on both banks and the crossing of the Rhine. Founded by the lords of Wasserstelz, a family of barons attested between the twelfth and the early fourteenth century and linked to the Abbey of Reichenau, it remained a fief of that abbey, and then of the Bishops of Constance after 1540. It passed in particular to the Heggenzer (fifteenth–sixteenth century), then to the Landsberg and later to the Holzapfel von Herxheim. Damaged during the Thirty Years' War, the castle was left to decay in the eighteenth century, and its south walls slid towards the Rhine. Having become Baden property in 1803, only fragmentary sections of wall survive today, consolidated in 1989. The former lower bailey, with a portal dated 1560, now houses a hotel-restaurant.