Cultural heritage D-2-7540-0073 in Vilsbiburg

The Burgstall Lichtenburg is a vanished medieval lowland castle near Vilsbiburg in Lower Bavaria. It stands on a mound rising twenty metres above the Vils valley, between the hamlets of Stadelöd and Marxbauer. The site stretches 190 metres from east to west and 110 metres from north to south, shaped like a lying figure eight.

Archaeologists recognise traces of earlier buildings beneath the mound, including a curved neck ditch that once separated the stronghold from the land behind. Roman coins found in the ruins suggest the spot had military value along a Roman road. A ministerial family named Oswald zu Liechtenburg appears in records from the 15th century as overseers of nearby estates. By 1818 the place had become part of the parish of Frauensattling.

Visitors see a steep gravel face cut by modern extraction, revealing layers of brickwork and rubble. The western slope shows the old ditch line, while the eastern end once held a farmyard protected by a shallow ditch. The whole mound remains under threat from further gravel digging, exposing more of the buried structure each year.