Ziesar castle

The Burg Ziesar stands on the eastern bank of the Kobser Bach at the southern edge of the small town of Ziesar in Brandenburg. Built as a lowland castle, it once served as the residence of the Prince-Bishop of the Bishopric of Brandenburg. The site first appears in a 10th-century charter when Emperor Otto I granted the bishops control of Ziesar and surrounding lands. The castle’s history reflects centuries of power shifts. After a Slawen uprising in 983 forced the bishops into exile in Magdeburg, the fortress became a secondary residence when Albrecht the Bear reclaimed Brandenburg in 1157. Bishop Balduin rebuilt the swampy stronghold in brick in the early 13th century, and Bishop Dietrich IV transformed it into a palatial complex with a new chapel consecrated in 1470. The Reformation ended church rule in 1560, turning the site into a dowager residence and later a school. Visitors enter through the main gate below the chapel’s choir, where two stone watchmen by Alexander Calandrelli stand guard. The 35-metre-high keep, topped with a watchman’s chamber called a bishop’s mitre, offers wide views across the countryside. The Gothic chapel of St Peter and Paul, built of red brick, holds medieval wall paintings preserved under whitewash applied by Huguenot refugees in the 17th century. Inside the upper courtyard, the three-storey palas shows layers of Gothic windows beneath later Baroque plasterwork, while the surviving Storchenturm recalls the vanished outer defences.