Löwenburg and Philippsburg

Two ruined hill castles share a spur 350 metres up above the Eifel village of Monreal in the Elzbach valley: the larger Löwenburg, also called Monreal Castle, and the smaller Philippsburg, known locally as das Rech — "the Deer". Both date from the thirteenth century and were works of the counts of Virneburg; Count Hermann III built here, ironically, on the territory of his brother Philip, following a partition agreement.

Though Monreal lay in the Electorate of Trier, the Virneburgs always enjoyed good relations with Cologne — one was elected Archbishop of Cologne in 1306, at about sixty, and held the office for 26 years — and in the fourteenth century alone the family supplied six members of the cathedral chapter at Trier. Under Robert IV of Virneburg, lord of Monreal from 1384 to 1445, the estate was developed and the castle served several times as a dower house of the comital family.

By the early sixteenth century Monreal had replaced the ancestral castle at Virneburg itself, but when the line died out with Count Cuno's death in 1545, Henry of Leiningen succeeded as vassal. The castles were damaged in the seventeenth century; in 1815 the ruins were granted to Prussia, and today the tall cylindrical bergfried of the Löwenburg dominates the accessible ruins.