Old Castle

Tradition credits Duke Liudolf of Swabia with building a castle in 950 to guard the stud farm, the "Stuotgarten", that gave Stuttgart its name. Excavations carried out up to 2012 found no archaeological trace of any such tenth-century structure, however. What they did uncover beneath the Old Castle's southern wing was a first castle, its double outer wall and two ditches still traceable, that probably dates instead from the second half of the twelfth or first half of the thirteenth century, the Staufer period. That first castle was not a princely residence: it apparently stood to guard and control a long-distance trade route crossing the Stuttgart valley, and was badly damaged by a flood, probably later in the thirteenth century.

The castle had passed to Count Eberhard I of Württemberg by 1292, and around 1300 building began on a successor stronghold, a timber beam from its wall dated by dendrochronology to between 1292 and 1312. Its walls were founded far deeper than before, and the whole building was turned some 45 degrees to face the flood-prone ground with a solid wall rather than a corner. This second castle became the main seat of the Counts of Württemberg and their Court Chamber in the first half of the fourteenth century, ringed by a deep moat.

Between 1553 and 1578, Dukes Christoph and Louis III had the medieval castle rebuilt as a Renaissance palace under the architect Aberlin Tretsch, assisted by the young master builder Blasius Berwart, who is credited with an equestrian staircase. To make room for a new arcaded courtyard in front of the remodelled ducal apartments, roughly 60 per cent of the old castle's fabric, its whole north-western portion, was pulled down. The new wings included a Schlosskirche, consecrated in 1562. On the Schillerplatz side the floor level was raised by roughly six metres against flooding; on the opposite side, the old ground-floor state room, the Dürnitz, became a wine cellar and was used as one into the twentieth century. The surrounding moats were not filled in until the eighteenth century.

Fire on the night of 21–22 December 1931 largely destroyed the Dürnitz wing and both of its towers. An architectural competition followed; its results, announced in 1933, awarded no first prize, though Paul Schmitthenner shared second place and went on to direct the rebuilding. Before that work was finished, the castle was badly damaged again during the Second World War, and large parts of the Landesmuseum Württemberg's folk-life collection were destroyed by fire in the process. Reconstruction, again led by Schmitthenner, did not begin until the mid-1960s and was completed in 1971.

King Charles I of Württemberg and Queen Olga are buried in the royal vault beneath the Schlosskirche, alongside Duke Wilhelm Eugen, Duchess Vera and their son Karl Eugen. The courtyard holds an equestrian monument to Count Eberhard "im Bart", who became the first Duke of Württemberg in 1495 and made Stuttgart his residence. On the Karlsplatz side of the Old Castle, a memorial commemorates Claus von Stauffenberg, a former Stuttgart resident executed for his part in the 20 July 1944 attempt to kill Adolf Hitler. The Schlosskirche still holds services, and the Old Castle itself now houses the Landesmuseum Württemberg, standing beside its eighteenth-century successor, the New Castle.