Burg Matzersreuth

Burg Matzersreuth once stood in the village of the same name near Tirschenreuth in eastern Bavaria. The site appears in records from the 12th century, when it was called Mehtilderute in a papal charter. Local counts from the Schweinfurter and Diepoldinger families probably founded the settlement in the 11th century. The first clear mention of both village and castle comes in 1390, when three sons of an Eger citizen sold their ‘gemauert sitz zu Metzleinsreuth’ to a monastery chaplain. After passing to the monastery the castle fell into disrepair, never serving as a court seat. Today only earthworks and two ponds mark the vanished stronghold. A large village pond shaped like an angle sits at the centre of Matzersreuth, with a second pond below the fire station. A low dam runs beside the main pond, and together they may once have formed a ring moat around a small island. That island rises about a metre above the water and measures roughly fifty by forty metres. Recent repairs to the ponds have altered the ground level, so the original defences are no longer visible. Visitors walk through the quiet village lanes to see the two ponds and the dam. The larger pond still holds water, reflecting the surrounding houses and the spire of the local church. The second pond lies near the fire station, its banks lined with reeds and willows. Archaeologists have studied the site and published their findings, but the remains remain modest. The village itself offers little besides these subtle traces of its medieval past.