Wingsch Real Estate Investments   

Theme Week Upper Middle Rhine Valley – Stahleck Castle

Thursday, 29 May 2025 - 12:00 pm (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: European Union / Europäische Union
Category/Kategorie: General, Hotels, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  7 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post Stahleck Castle (German: Burg Stahleck) is a 12th-century fortified castle in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley at Bacharach in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It stands on a crag approximately 160 metres (520 ft) above sea level on the left bank of the river at the mouth of the Steeg valley, approximately 50 kilometres (31 mi) south of Koblenz, and offers a commanding view of the Lorelei valley. Its name means “impregnable castle on a crag”, from the Middle High German words stahel (steel) and ecke (here: crag). It has a water-filled partial moat, a rarity in Germany. Built on the orders of the Archbishop of Cologne, it was destroyed in the late 17th century but rebuilt in the 20th and is now a hostel.

The castle today is a 20th-century reconstruction, primarily based on the results of excavation and the 1646 engraving by Matthäus Merian. The rebuilding plans were mostly the work of Ernst Stahl, who closely followed Merian’s depiction and used other historical models where the engraving gave no information. For example, the almost rectangular shape of the castle, measuring approximately 55 by 24 m, shows the typical regular layout and clear divisions of a castle of the Hohenstaufen period. The size of the modern buildings approximates that of those in the original castle; the oldest portions are the foundations of the keep, parts of the cellar under the palas and sections of the curtain wall. Since the castle is used as a hostel, it is not available for tours. However, the courtyard is accessible to the public and offers a fine view of the Rhine, since on that side there is only a low parapet.

The palas (residential building) is 2 storeys high, built of crushed stone lined with Rhenish Schwemmstein (a traditional artificial material made of dried pumice and lime, similar to concrete), and stands at the eastern, Rhine valley end of the courtyard, over a vaulted cellar that Ernst Stahl dated to the time of Conrad of Hohenstaufen. It has a shingled hip roof 10 m high. Adjoining it on the southwest side is the so-called kitchen building, with Fachwerk first floor, which today is the residence of the hostel managers. On the courtyard side, a red sandstone tablet commemorates Duke Karl Ludwig‘s rebuilding of the castle. The inscription reads:

CARL LVDWIG PFALTZGRAF CHVRFÜRST ERNEVERT MICH ANNO 1666 (Carl Ludwig, Count Palatine [and] Elector, remade me in the year 1666)

Of the numerous details that Stahl once envisaged incorporating in the rebuilding of the castle, only the windows and chandeliers of the great hall exist today. The 11 windows of the hall, made of stained glass by the Düsseldorf glass painter Richard Gassen, depict the most important events in the history of the castle and the arms of the people or institutions of the Rhine Province in the 1920s. They are framed by versions in basalt which can only be seen from outside. The room has an oak plank floor and holds approximately 100 people.

Although documentary evidence leads to the conclusion that the castle was built in the 12th century at the latest, the archaeological investigations have been unable to provide proof. Stahl believed, however, that the preserved foundations of the bergfried (keep) should be dated to the 12th century. The keep is a round tower 7.5 m in diameter which stands on bedrock in the centre of the inner courtyard. It has walls 2 metres thick and is topped by a 16 m cone-shaped roof. The top floor, 4 m high, was added later, which can be seen from the different colour of the stone.

The castle is defended from the high hillside on the west by a chemise wall which has been fortified to form a shield wall 2.6 m thick. There is an interior stairway, which does not, however, reach as far as the roofed chemin de ronde at the top of the wall; it is used to reach the upper floors of the 1930s tower building. Some of the tall, narrow embrasures were subsequently walled closed at the base and fitted with wooden frames to absorb the recoil of early firearms. Their fishtail shape indicates that the wall dates to the first half of the 14th century. At the top they are flanked on both sides by polygonal turrets which replaced two earlier round towers. Below the shield wall is a moat cut out of the rock. A section of this measuring 18 by 13 metres is separated off and filled with water, doubling as a cistern. A stone bridge leads over the moat to the main entrance; the gateway is guarded by an embrasured turret above and leads to an elongated zwinger.

The former boys’ hostel is now called the longhouse. It has a ground floor of crushed stone and a Fachwerk first floor. The slate roof has a dormer on the courtyard side with a curved gable. What is now known as the tower building, formerly the girls’ hostel, stands against the shield wall. It resembles the longhouse in its details. A walled platform cut out of the rock a little above the castle to the southwest is a post-medieval position for artillery aimed at the hillside which was an important part of the castle’s defences after the introduction of gunpowder. Its precise date is unknown, but Matthäus Merian’s 17th-century engraving shows that it existed by 1646.

Here you can find the complete Overview of all Theme Weeks.

Read more on Wikipedia Stahleck Castle. Learn more about the use of photos. To inform you about latest news most of the city, town or tourism websites offer a newsletter service and/or operate Facebook pages/Twitter accounts. In addition more and more destinations, tourist organizations and cultural institutions offer Apps for your Smart Phone or Tablet, to provide you with a mobile tourist guide (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.

---

Recommended posts:

• Bacharach on the Rhine
• Hohenzollern Castle
• Krak des Chevaliers in Syria
• The Schwerin Castle in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
• Theme Week Upper Middle Rhine Valley – Stolzenfels Castle
• Prague Castle
• Himeji Castle in Japan
• Pears Jewish Campus in Berlin
• Royal Mile in Edinburgh
• Germany’s Hotel of the Year 2012: Burg Schlitz
• Theme Week Upper Middle Rhine Valley
• Theme Week Upper Middle Rhine Valley – Lorelei
• Theme Week Hungary – Visegrád
• The porcelain and wine city of Meissen
• Grassmarket in Edinburgh