En un regard
Le château en bref
The Neuwaldsee ruin, locally known as ‘Burgstock’, stands on a wooded moraine hill about 685 m above the Urbach valley, south-east of Mittelurbach, between that village and Hittisweiler, in the municipality of Bad Waldsee (Ravensburg district). It was a small hilltop castle of the castle-tower type: a main tower enclosed by a circular wall about two metres thick, itself surrounded by a ditch, a layout comparable to that of the nearby Fronhofen and Hatzenturm sites.
Founded by the lords of Waldsee in the early 13th century, it served as the residence of a castle bailiff in the service of that family. It appears in a document dated 7 February 1331 under the name ‘Newe Waltse’, the year in which the Waldsees ceded their possessions to the Habsburgs. Having become obsolete by the end of the Middle Ages, it gradually fell into ruin. Its destruction was long attributed to the earthquake of 1348; research by municipal archivist Michael Barczyk has shown that in 1649 the Franciscans of Waldsee blew up what remained, with the consent of the Truchsess of Waldburg, in order to reuse the stone for the construction of their monastery.
Today, only modest masonry remains and the outline of the site survive in the forest; an information board has been installed there. The site is freely accessible, is maintained by the local section of the German Alpine Club (DAV Bad Waldsee), and can be reached on foot from Mittelurbach. Caution is advised around the cavities surrounding the stones.
