Turmhügel Göttersdorf

The Turmhügel Göttersdorf is a medieval motte beside the Vils in Göttersdorf, a village that now belongs to Osterhofen in Lower Bavaria. A steep earthen mound up to seven metres high rises from the north-eastern bank, its flat top shaped like a trapezium with sides of forty, thirty and twenty-five metres. Once a broad ring-ditch fed by a loop of the river protected the site, and traces of the ditch remain as a shallow hollow on the northern edge. The mound itself points to a late 11th-century origin, while the surrounding fields show where the ditch was filled in during the 19th century. The place gained new importance in 1681 when the Fugger family turned the motte into a three-storey country house with steep roofs and two towers, one crowned by a bell-cast dome. A wooden fence and single-storey outbuilding enclosed the courtyard, and the slope below carried orchard trees. By 1827 the last Fugger owner sold the estate, and after 1834 the castle was demolished and the mound levelled for farmland. Only the medieval chapel of St George survived, though now it forms the cellar of a private house on Schloßbergstraße. Visitors today see a quiet village lane where the chapel’s entrance leads down three metres to a two-bay vaulted room with a half-round apse. A blocked stair once climbed from the chapel to the vanished castle above. The chapel’s dedication to St George and its position beside the riverbank recall an early fortress, while the filled ring-ditch now forms a strip of orchard grass beside the water. The site remains a quiet reminder of Göttersdorf’s centuries as a lordly seat.