Turmhügel Altencreußen

The Turmhügel Altencreußen is the remains of a small medieval castle on a spur above the river Creußen, just south of the village of Altencreußen in Upper Franconia. The site once formed part of a larger water-burg complex first recorded in 1337 as a ‘festes Haus’. By the early 15th century the Künsberg family held the seat, but it was ruined during the Hussite wars in 1430 and later listed as a Burgstall in 1431 and 1499. Today the low mound and its surrounding ditches survive as a scheduled monument on farmland.

The castle sat on a tongue of land that drops about four metres to the south and is framed by two small stream valleys. At the tip stood a round core mound eighteen metres across, protected by a ring ditch and outer bank. Where these earthworks remain intact the ditch is seven metres wide and the bank ten metres wide, rising up to 1.7 metres inside and 2.8 metres from the outside. A careful plan drawn in 1792 by the cartographer Johann Christoph Stierlein shows the original layout, including a long spur of bank extending southwards between the streams.

Visitors walk across gently sloping fields to reach the site. The main mound is still visible, though partly lowered by later farming. The ring ditch and outer bank form low earthworks around it, and the southern spur of bank remains as a narrow ridge flanked by the two streams. The whole scene is quiet farmland, with no modern buildings on the spur, so the medieval lines of defence stand out clearly against the open landscape.