Schloss Aub

Schloss Aub stands on the highest point in the south-west corner of the small town of Aub in Lower Franconia. It is built into the old town wall, so the castle and the town defences form one structure. The oldest parts date from the 13th-century castle of the Lords of Hohenlohe, though only buried foundations remain. A 1369 deed first names the stronghold as the ‘Veste in Awe’. The castle’s oldest visible remains belong to the later medieval fortress built by the Truchsess of Baldersheim, who held the court office of dapifer under the Hohenlohe. Inside the cellar vaults of the castle and the old hospital the tithe wine from the Gollach valley vineyards was once stored. In the 15th century the town’s defences were completed with fifteen towers, and the area around the castle became known as the Truchsess Quarter. Today the castle’s Bergfried still carries the weather-vane of a griffin, the coat of arms of Prince-Bishop Johann Philipp von Greiffenclau. Below it, the Spätrenaissance façade shows how the prince-bishops of Würzburg turned the building into an administrative seat and hunting lodge after the Reformation. The castle sits above the steep Mühlstraße, and from the tower the view stretches over the red roofs of Aub and the surrounding vineyards.