Keltenwall Altkönig

The Ringwall Altkönig stands on the summit of the Altkönig, a 798-metre peak in the Taunus hills north of Frankfurt. Built in the early La Tène period around 400 BC, it is a double-walled hillfort enclosing 26 hectares, with an extra annexe of 11 hectares protecting a spring. The stone ramparts, made of local quartzite, stretch 950 metres on the inner ring and 1,390 metres on the outer, separated by 50 to 80 metres of open ground. Archaeologists still debate whether the two rings were built together or added later, and whether fire once fused parts of the walls. A bronze animal brooch found inside confirms a 4th-century BC date. Later, in the 4th–5th centuries AD, Roman coins and artefacts show the summit was reused by people watching the frontier zone. In the 16th century Erasmus Alberus mentioned the ‘old walls’ in verse, and in 1792 locals fleeing French raiders took shelter among the ruins. Visitors walk the grassy ramparts and peer into the 60-metre gap where a gate may once have stood. The inner ring has a single simple gate on the east side, while the outer ring once had two gates, one leading to the annexe. From the summit there are wide views over the fertile Wetterau plain and the Main valley below. Inside the inner enclosure faint traces of smaller structures hint at brief occupation rather than a permanent settlement.