Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg

Orschwiller

Visible from across the Alsace plain, set at 757 metres above Orschwiller, the Haut-Kœnigsbourg has guarded the wine, wheat, salt and silver routes since the Middle Ages. The outcrop, mentioned as early as 774 under the name Stofenberk in a charter of Charlemagne, bore by 1147 a castle of the Hohenstaufen, the Burg Staufen. Burned once in 1462 by a punitive expedition from Colmar, Strasbourg and Basel launched against the robber knights occupying it, rebuilt and adapted for artillery by the Thierstein family from 1479, it reached its height around 1500. In 1633, during the Thirty Years' War, the Swedes besieged it for fifty-two days then burned it: two centuries of abandonment followed, during which the ruin inspired Romantic poets and artists. Listed as a historic monument as early as 1862, the remains were given in 1899 by the town of Sélestat to Emperor Wilhelm II, who wanted to make it a manifesto of Alsace's Germanic past: the architect Bodo Ebhardt restored it from 1900 to 1908 to its supposed late-15th-century state, and the château was inaugurated on 13 May 1908. Returned to France in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles, owned by the department since 2007, it receives more than 500,000 visitors a year.

Getting there : Access road signposted from Orschwiller, Kintzheim or Sélestat (A35 motorway exit); car parks along the road then a short walk; ticket office on site.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound