Castle Peiting

Burg Peiting, also called Welfenburg, was a high-medieval hilltop castle standing 733 metres above sea level on the Schneckenbichl ridge south of the Lech. It overlooks the market town of Peiting from the north-west on land belonging to Schongau. Nearby, the Schlossberg section-fortification was long mistaken for the Welfenburg, but archaeologists now date that site to the 9th or 10th century. The Peiting castle on the Schneckenbichl was wrecked during the Thirty Years’ War and its final stones were cleared away in 1806. The fortress is first recorded in 1101 as ‘nova arx Bitengoe’, though it was probably built by Duke Welf I about 1055. The Welf family, who also took part in the Crusades, made the castle the centre of their Lechrain lands. After the Peiting branch died out in 1191 with Welf VI, the castle passed to the Staufer, then to the Wittelsbachs in 1268. In 1325 Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian pledged it to Bertold of Seefeld, and in 1632 Swedish troops destroyed it. Today the Schneckenbichl ridge shows low earthworks and scattered stone blocks where walls once stood. A Bronze Age settlement once occupied the same spot, and the site is protected as a scheduled monument. Visitors walk a quiet forest path to the summit and see the Lech valley stretching below, with Peiting’s rooftops visible to the south-east. The air is calm, broken only by the sound of wind in the pines.