Germany · Restored
Ortenberg Castle
Schloss Ortenberg
Ortenberg Castle (Schloss Ortenberg) is the landmark fortress above the town of Ortenberg in the Ortenau, originally founded in the 11th–12th century by the House of Zähringen and rebuilt repeatedly. The present red-sandstone Gothic-style castle was reconstructed 1838–1843 by Friedrich Eisenlohr on the medieval ruins; it now houses a youth hostel and has been conserved through late 20th-century restorations.
Its prime
1843
Today
Restored
As it stood in 1843
What Ortenberg Castle looked like in its prime.
Perched on a terraced vineyard slope, the castle is a warm red-sandstone complex of a four-storey rectangular residential block with corner turrets and a crenellated roofline, surrounded by an enclosing curtain wall with multiple round battery towers and roundels. A taller crenellated keep-like tower rises above the group; zwinger walls step down the slope. The site includes clustered service buildings along the outer bailey and a tree-filled inner courtyard set against the rocky base.
Its story
The story of Ortenberg Castle.
Ortenberg Castle was built by the House of Zähringen in the 11th or 12th century to protect the Kinzig Valley, above the town of Ortenberg where the valley ends between Offenburg and Gengenbach. Under the Hohenstaufen it served as the administrative centre for the Landvögte, the bailiffs, of the Ortenau, functioning as a centre of imperial taxation, a court and a customs authority.
The present castle is largely a 19th-century creation: Baron Gabriel Leonhard von Berckholtz (1781–1863), from Livland, had the German architect Friedrich Eisenlohr reconstruct the castle in Gothic style on the medieval ruins between 1838 and 1843. The red-sandstone landmark of the Ortenau was conserved through late 20th-century restorations and today houses a youth hostel.
Step inside
10 places to explore in 1843.
The record describes 10 distinct spots at Ortenberg Castle, including 5 interiors: schimmelturm (lookout and dungeon), malerturm (former powder tower / studio), jakobsturm (stair and neck-ditch defense) and more. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
Build Your Own Castle
Recreate Ortenberg Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1843, a photoreal reconstruction that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate this castle →Castle Siege
Play Castle Siege at Ortenberg Castle.
A strategy game played on Ortenberg Castle’s real ground plan: the same surveyed walls shown in the archive below. Post your finite garrison on the battlements between assaults, then hold out as rams, siege towers, trebuchets and sappers arrive in ever-worse waves.
Sign in free to see the garrison muster. One castle costs 150 Clan Coins and is yours forever.
Sign in to take command →Whose castle
Clans who held Ortenberg Castle.
The families that held Ortenberg Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Zähringen
Built by the House of Zähringen in the 11th–12th century to guard the Kinzig Valley.
Berckholtz
Baron Gabriel Leonhard von Berckholtz had the castle rebuilt in Gothic style, 1838–43.
From the archive
Ortenberg Castle on paper: the measured plan and period views.
The survey plan and photographs below are the ground truth this page's reconstructions are checked against, drawn and photographed while the castle was still a working garrison. Every image is public-domain or openly licensed, with its source named.
Fig. 83
1912 · Otto Piper, Burgenkunde (1912)
Public domain
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