Schloss Tapfheim

Schloss Tapfheim stands on an artificial mound in the south of Tapfheim village in the Donau-Ries district. A moat once surrounded the site. The present building replaced an earlier castle that had been owned since 1515 by Hieronimus von Croaria. In 1692 the Kaisheim monastery bought Tapfheim for 80,000 gulden from Count Jacob de Hamilton. Abt Roger II Röls commissioned a new residence in 1730, the one still seen today. The two-storey house is framed by north and south gables with scroll volutes on two levels and divided by three heavy, profiled cornices. The west front carries a round-arched central doorway flanked by pilasters with projecting cornices and entablature pieces topped by small pediments. All windows in the main block are plain rectangles without frames. On the south-west corner a stone set above the plinth bears the initials R A Z K for Roger, Abbot of Kaisheim. The interior preserves the 18th-century layout created under Abt Roger II. Visitors walk through rooms arranged around a central staircase lit by tall windows. The stone portal and pilaster details remain as built in 1730. Outside, the raised site gives wide views across the surrounding countryside. The moat has been filled, but its former line is still marked in the grass.