Germany · Restored
Willibaldsburg
Willibaldsburg is a fortified episcopal palace on a long ridge above the Altmühl valley at Eichstätt in Upper Bavaria. Built and transformed through the late medieval and Renaissance periods, its large late-Renaissance Gemmingenbau with twin towers and surrounding bastion fortifications form the prominent ensemble that houses museums and state collections today.
First raised
1353
Its prime
1629
Today
Restored
As it stood in 1629
What Willibaldsburg looked like in its prime.
Long elongated fortress-palace set on a rocky ridge above a river bend, dominated by a four-storey pale limestone late-Renaissance block (the Gemmingenbau) with two projecting square corner towers whose upper sections form octagonal tops with crenellated parapets, red tile roofs, and regular rows of rectangular windows. In front lie thick stone curtain and shield walls and angular bastions with low glacis; an outer bailey and gate range sit on the eastern approach. The complex reads as a fortified residence integrated with artillery bastions.
Its story
The story of Willibaldsburg.
The Willibaldsburg is a spur castle on a long ridge above the Altmühl valley at Eichstätt in Upper Bavaria, begun around 1353 and, until the middle of the eighteenth century, the representative castle and seat of Eichstätt's prince-bishops. After the Counts of Hirschberg died out in 1305 the bishops had to organise the military security of the diocese themselves, and under Bishop Berthold von Zollern (1355–1365) expansion into a fortified episcopal residence began.
The great late-Renaissance Gemmingenbau, with its twin towers behind a five-metre-thick shield wall, embodies Gemmingen's vision of a lavishly furnished castle with treasure vaults decorated with plants and figures, and gardens forming an Italian-style summer residence of a kind then unknown in Germany. Two bastions of 1612 still guard the entrance portal beneath a statue of St Willibald.
In 1725 the bishop moved to the new city palace beside the cathedral, and the Willibaldsburg declined into offices, a hospital and a prison. After the bishopric was secularised in 1806 the Bavarian state sold the complex to private owners; the town of Eichstätt bought it in 1880, the state took it over in 1900 and made it a cultural monument, and since renovations begun in 1962 it has housed museums and state collections.
Step inside
10 places to explore in 1629.
The record describes 10 distinct spots at Willibaldsburg, including 4 interiors: gate hall (63 m barrel-vaulted passage), the dirnitz (gothic five-bay cross-vaulted hall), two-aisled barrel-vaulted cellar beneath the dirnitz 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.
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