En un regard
Le château en bref
This ruin, known as Alt-Dettingen and located at the locality of Burghof, lies on the south-western shore of the Überlinger See, the north-western arm of Lake Constance, between Dettingen and Wallhausen, today districts of the town of Constance. It is a lowland castle raised on a motte towards the end of the twelfth century by the lords of Dettingen (Tettingen), a family that included the Minnesinger Heinrich von Tettingen and Werner von Tettingen, a senior dignitary of the Teutonic Order. It formed a twin complex with the neighbouring castle of Neu-Dettingen, built on the former bailey. In the fourteenth century the Tettingen held almost the whole of Dettingen and Wallhausen; in 1346 Burkhardt von Tettingen bequeathed his possessions to his wife and daughters, who sold them in 1362 to the Teutonic Order's commandery of Mainau island. The castle is said to have been abandoned before 1350. The circumstances of its destruction remain obscure. An illicit excavation at the end of 2012 revived the debate over the attribution of the two sites, the ruin possibly corresponding in fact to Neu-Dettingen. Remains of a polygonal enclosure wall, the foundations of a residential tower on the motte and the trace of the ditch survive. The site is freely accessible on foot.
