Langensteinbach Castle

Architecture, patrimoine et histoire · Landkreis Karlsruhe

On a wooded hill south of Langensteinbach, a village in the municipality of Karlsbad in the district of Karlsruhe, stands the massive stump of a Romanesque keep that locals like to call the 'Römerturm', the Roman tower. The name is misleading: the building was erected around 1100 as a tower castle whose residential tower, with walls some 3.5 metres thick at the base, probably rose to about 35 metres. A fire partly destroyed it; when it was rebuilt, a ditch was dug right at the foot of the foundations to keep siege engines away. Even so, the site was abandoned as early as the 13th century. Excavations in the 1970s refined its chronology thanks to the pottery sherds recovered. Today the restored stump of the tower and the surrounding ditch-and-rampart system form an evocative ensemble, completed by the nearby ruins of the later St Barbara chapel.