Schloss Albeck (Langenau)

Schloss Albeck stands in the old centre of Albeck, a district of Langenau in the Alb-Donau district of Baden-Württemberg. It occupies a commanding position on the southern edge of the Flöz valley, north of Ulm. The site has been fortified since the late 11th century, when Duke Friedrich I of Swabia built a castle to secure the border against Ulm, then held by the Welfs. The first written record of someone calling himself ‘von Albeck’ dates from 1107/08. Over the centuries the fortress passed through the hands of the counts of Werdenberg-Sargans and the free imperial city of Ulm before becoming a ducal Bavarian judicial seat in the early 19th century. The castle’s medieval core was rebuilt as a Baroque schloss in 1712 under master builder Heinrich Hacker. The only parts left from the original structure are sections of the enclosing walls, the south and west corner towers, and part of the ditch cut from the rock. The south tower, originally built about 1300, was heightened in 1900 and given a brick parapet and render. Inside the tower a hearth shaft shows it once served as a heated guardroom. The west tower survives as a four-metre stump topped by a modern pavilion. Visitors today walk past the partly rebuilt medieval shield wall, its original ashlar facing still visible in places. The southern curtain wall and the rock-cut ditch, up to seven metres deep and 10 to 20 metres wide, remain striking features. Attached to the south tower is the former court-officer’s house, a mansard-roofed building of 1805. Modern farm buildings now occupy the site of the old palace and stables, but the setting beside the Flöz valley still conveys the castle’s strategic position above the surrounding countryside.