Schloss Ettenheim

Schloss Ettenheim stands in the town of Ettenheim in the Ortenau district of Baden-Württemberg. The building began as a Renaissance-style Amtshaus in 1560, designed by Bishop Erasmus Schenk von Limpurg. A three-storey structure with a matching three-storey pitched roof, it sits on older cellar foundations and shows its cellar storey clearly on the slope above the courtyard. The palace became the last residence of the Prince-Bishop of Strasbourg, Louis René Édouard de Rohan-Guémené, in the 18th century. After fleeing revolutionary forces in 1790, he returned in 1801 and died there in 1803. The upper floor still displays a surviving Gobelin tapestry from his uncle, Armand Gaston de Rohan-Soubise, alongside a Torah curtain from Ettenheim’s former synagogue. Behind the main building, the former Vogt’s house now holds sheltered flats, and its vaulted cellar is used by a local cultural group. Visitors enter through a double staircase beneath a stone coat of arms dated 1560. Inside, the session room on the first floor holds the Gobelin and the Parochet. The cellars preserve medieval masonry, while the courtyard reveals the original Renaissance gables and stone frieze. The surrounding town retains the palace’s role as a civic landmark, its history visible in every architectural detail.