Luxembourg · Ruin
Brandenbourg Castle
Brandenbourg Castle is a medieval stone castle ruin on a rocky promontory above the village of Brandenbourg in north-eastern Luxembourg. The site retains a tall rectangular keep, curtain walls enclosing an inner ward and a lower bailey, and surviving traces of towers, a chapel and vaulted cellars. The state has carried out consolidation and archaeological work while the ruin remains open to the public.
First raised
1000
Its prime
1550
Today
Ruin
As it stood in 1550
What Brandenbourg Castle looked like in its prime.
Sited on a narrow rocky promontory 70 metres above the village, the castle is an elongated enclosure of grey-brown masonry with continuous curtain walls and projecting round and angular wall-towers. A tall rectangular stone keep rises above the inner ward with multiple floors and a defined roofline. The layout includes a lower bailey cut into the slope, inner courtyard, and vaulted cellar ranges beneath the main buildings; at its prime all walls, towers and roofs stood complete.
Its story
The story of Brandenbourg Castle.
Brandenbourg Castle stands on a promontory some 70 metres above the village of Brandenbourg in north-eastern Luxembourg, on a site with a history going back to the 9th and 10th centuries, when a wooden fort stood here. The 13th-century keep once had four floors; three remain, standing 11.9 metres high.
During the 15th and 16th centuries, under the House of Salm, the castle was expanded, a bailey, two towers, vaulted cellars and curtain walls were added. Around 1687 the French destroyed the external walls, and the castle subsequently fell increasingly into ruin.
It is now owned by the du Fays-van Delft family, who in 1997 signed an emphyteutic lease with the State of Luxembourg permitting the state to carry out consolidation and archaeological excavation. The ruin is open to the public daily, closed only from November to March.
Step inside
9 places to explore in 1550.
The record describes 9 distinct spots at Brandenbourg Castle, including 3 interiors: keep upper floor and roof terrace, chapel interior, vaulted cellars. 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 Brandenbourg Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1550, a photoreal reconstruction that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate this castle →Castle Siege
Play Castle Siege at Brandenbourg Castle.
A strategy game played on Brandenbourg 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 Brandenbourg Castle.
The families that held Brandenbourg Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Salm
The House of Salm held Brandenbourg in the 15th and 16th centuries, adding the bailey, two towers, vaulted cellars and curtain walls.
du Fays-van Delft
Current owners of the castle; a 1997 emphyteutic lease lets the State of Luxembourg conserve and excavate the ruin.
From the archive
Brandenbourg 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.
Les ruines du château de Brandenbourg
· National Museum of Archaeology, History and Art (via Europeana)
Public domain
Les ruines du château de Brandenbourg
· National Museum of Archaeology, History and Art (via Europeana)
Public domain
