Germany · Ruin
Nürburg Castle
The Nürburg is a ruined hilltop castle in the Eifel Mountains near the village of Nürburg in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It crowns a steep volcanic basalt cone inside the modern Nürburgring Nordschleife and consists of a rectangular inner ward, multiple rings of curtain walls and a tall cylindrical bergfried; the site dates to the 12th century and fell into ruin after late 17th-century destruction.
First raised
1166
Its prime
1450
Today
Ruin
As it stood in 1450
What Nürburg Castle looked like in its prime.
Perched on a steep volcanic basalt cone, the castle presents a tiered silhouette of dark basalt masonry: a tall, plain cylindrical bergfried at the centre, lower rectangular inner-ward walls, and two concentric curtain walls pierced by round towers with steep conical slate roofs. The stone is rough-hewn local basalt, walls are thick with narrow arrow slits, rooflines are dominated by the conical tower tops and the flat-topped keep; the whole sits above tree-covered slopes with a village at the base.
Its story
The story of Nürburg Castle.
Count Ulrich's Basalt Cone, 1166–1290
The summit first appears in the records in 1166 as Noureberg, or Mons Nore, though it was probably in use long before that: a signal station is thought to have stood on the volcanic basalt cone in Roman times, watching the important Roman road that ran through the Eifel. Dietrich I of Are had already begun a refuge castle on the mountain, but his son, Count Ulrich, named in a document of 1169, is reckoned the castle's actual builder.
Ulrich's descendants called themselves the lords of Nürburg and Are, and held the place as vassals of the bishops of Cologne and of the Hohenstaufen emperor. When the line failed in 1290, with no descendants left, the castle reverted to the Electorate of Cologne. The archbishopric installed a bailiff, an Amtmann, to represent its interests on the mountain from then on.
Three Rings of Wall, Then Decay
Building went on in three stages. The rectangular inner ward came first; then, between 1340 and 1369 under the bailiff Johann von Schleiden, zwinger walls were thrown round it as a second ring of defence. A third wall followed in the fifteenth century, to enclose the castellans' houses that had until then stood freely accessible outside the defences and that have not survived.
It did not wear well. By the sixteenth century the castle was in very poor condition and the serving bailiffs complained of it, which brought repeated bouts of repair work.
Swedes, Imperial Troops and the French, 1633–1689
In 1633, during the Thirty Years' War, the Nürburg was taken by the Swedes under General Baudissin, who plundered and damaged it. Imperial troops occupied the castle in 1674. In 1689 French soldiers destroyed the place for good.
Prison, Quarry and Trigonometric Point
The bergfried survived the destruction and was put to use as a prison, until in 1752 it was no longer fit even for that. The castle was abandoned and worked as a stone quarry. In 1818 Prussia had the keep restored so that a trigonometric point could be established on it; in the course of that work the outer ward was pulled down, and only remnants of the enceinte now attest that it existed.
Repairs were carried out in the 1930s, and in 1949 the ruin passed to Rhineland-Palatinate's state conservation office, which entrusted its care to the administration of the state castles, today Burgen, Schlösser, Altertümer Rheinland-Pfalz. That body had work done from 1968 to 1974 and again in 1988–89, uncovering buried elements of the building and carrying out safety and restoration work; further masonry repairs have been under way since 2014.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 1450.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Nürburg Castle, including 3 interiors: rectangular inner ward (kernburg) courtyard, castellan's residential and service ranges, summit of the bergfried (roof platform). Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
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Clans who held Nürburg Castle.
The families that held Nürburg Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Are
Begun by Dietrich I of Are and built by his son Count Ulrich from the 1160s; their descendants, the lords of Nürburg and Are, held the castle until the line died out in 1290.
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