Burg Wasserburg

Burg Wasserburg stands on the highest point of an Inn river loop in the town of Wasserburg am Inn. It is not a true water-buried castle, for only seven-eighths of the site is ringed by water. The rest of the defences once stretched across the narrow neck of land that once formed the only land approach to the town below. A 16th-century bastion called the Schanze, added in 1615 and strengthened during the Thirty Years War, now guards the western approach. The castle first appears in records in 1137 when a predecessor chapel was mentioned. In 1247 Duke Ludwig II, later called the Severe, took the castle and town after a seventeen-week siege and thereafter Wasserburg remained Wittelsbach property. The present late-Gothic palace dates from 1529–1535, a three-storey building with a bold pitched roof and stepped gables. The medieval bergfried was pulled down in 1779 and the surrounding moats filled in 1809. Today the castle houses part of the local surveying office and a care home run by the Maria Stern convent. The late-Gothic chapel of St Ägidien still preserves its pointed helmeted spire, while the old ducal granary, rebuilt several times since 1238, remains a solid three-storey block. Visitors walk through the former defensive passages and along the river-side promenade that now occupies the filled moats.