Castle Keppenbach

The ruins of Keppenbach Castle stand on a long spur of the Schlossberg at 455 metres above sea level. They overlook the hamlet of Sägplatz and the Reichenbach district of Freiamt. The castle was built by the Keppenbach family, who first appear in records in 1161 as ministeriales of the Zähringen dukes. By 1276 the fortress had become their family seat. In 1336 it became a Ganerbenburg, a shared inheritance among several noble families, including the Schnewlins. The castle was destroyed twice for its owners’ misdeeds. In 1396 the Habsburgs ordered its demolition after the Keppenbacher lords turned to robbery. Rebuilt early in the 15th century, it was burned again in 1525 during the Peasants’ War. The surviving walls show a compact three-sided shield-wall design with a 2.3-metre-thick curtain rising seven and a half metres high. A thirty-metre-wide neck ditch defended the approach. Visitors walk past the remnants of the upper, middle and lower baileys. A hollow in the rock seventy metres north and thirty-eight metres below the main site may once have held the bergfried, linked to the outer ward by a bridge. Excavations have yielded finds now displayed in the local museum at Ottoschwanden and in the Baden State Museum. The rocky pedestal beneath the ruins is registered as a geotope by the state geological survey.