Burgruine Adelburg

The Adelburg ruin stands on the wooded top of the Kellerberg, a 610-metre hill rising like an island above the valleys of the Schwarze Laber. It lies 1.3 kilometres northeast of Eichenhofen, a village in Seubersdorf, in the Upper Palatinate of Bavaria. The site is reached only by walking paths that climb from nearby hamlets such as Hollerstetten and Klapfenberg. Built in the late 12th century by the lords of Adelburg, the fortress is first mentioned in 1180 when Engelhardus de Adelenburg appears in written records. After the family died out in 1230, the castle passed through many hands: dukes, knights, and towns like Nuremberg took it as pledge or reward. Repeated raids between 1413 and 1584 left the walls shattered, and in the 18th century stones were stripped to build a nearby pilgrimage church. Today the three-part ruin shows a five-metre-high ring wall of original buckle-shaped stones, still 1.45 metres thick in places. Visitors walk among the remnants of the inner keep and two outer baileys, with views across the forested hills. Buckle stones reused in later walls around Klapfenberg and Oberweiling hint at the fortress’s former reach.