Schloss Gerzen

Schloss Gerzen stands at the eastern edge of the rectangular market square in the village of Gerzen in Lower Bavaria. A two-storey Renaissance building from 1560–62, it has a steep pitched roof and classical window surrounds. The adjoining chapel, added around 1695, features an arcade and a small onion dome on its corner tower. The whole complex is protected as a monument and shows traces of earlier medieval phases beneath its present form. The site became the seat of the Vieregg family when Gerzen formed a Hofmark in 1597. In 1833 the historian and statesman Maximilian Graf von Montgelas bought the castle and laid out the enclosed park in 1903. During the Thirty Years War Swedish troops plundered the building, and in the Second World War Munich’s city museum stored valuable exhibits here. After the Montgelas family left in 2009, the castle was restored and now houses a hotel and restaurant that won the Bavarian heritage award in 2014. Visitors walk past the Renaissance façade and enter the chapel with its arcades and onion dome. Inside the hotel guests stay in rooms that preserve historic details, while the restaurant serves local dishes. The enclosed park behind the building offers quiet benches and mature trees, framing views of the castle’s gables and the market square beyond.