Schloss Presteneck

Schloss Presteneck is a Renaissance water castle in Stein am Kocher, a district of Neuenstadt am Kocher in northern Baden-Württemberg. It stands on four sides surrounded by a moat and is reached over a stone bridge. The village of Stein below the Upper Castle already had a medieval fortress on this site before 1335. The castle passed through several noble families—Weinsberg, Berlichingen, Echter von Mespelbrunn and Horneck von Hornberg—until Eberhard von Gemmingen bought it in 1549. His son Hans Walther rebuilt the older castle in 1580. During the Thirty Years’ War the Swedish-leaning owner Hans Philipp von Gemmingen suffered two plundering raids by Tilly’s troops. After the Gemmingen line died out in 1841 the building fell into disrepair until restoration between 1976 and 1981. The three-winged main building encloses a courtyard closed by a high wall and a richly decorated main portal. The wings are two-storeyed with vaulted ground floors of rough stone, once used as stables. A round defence tower marks the end of the north wing, while the south wing has a deeper gable. A stair-tower with timber-framed upper part stands between south and middle wings. Beside the castle gatehouse dated 1582–83 stands a 1579 barn, the oldest surviving structure from the Gemmingen period. Two carved stone heads from a medieval predecessor are built into a later barn wall.