Schloss Amerang

Schloss Amerang stands on a steep rocky crag south of the village of Oberratting in Upper Bavaria. The four-winged main building forms a nearly circular plan, its plain exterior still showing its medieval defensive character. The site is protected on three sides by deep ravines up to 35 metres deep, while the fourth side once had a dry moat. The oldest masonry, dated by oak beams, belongs to the period between 1370 and 1450. The castle’s roots go back to a 11th-century fortification first recorded in 1072. After the extinction of its first noble owners, the lords of Amerang, the Laiminger family held the site from 1330 until 1542. Their late-Gothic alterations turned it into a courtyard castle with a powerful cross-wall dividing the complex. In 1570 the Scaliger family, exiled Italian nobles, remodelled the ruins in early-Renaissance style, adding the three-storey arcaded courtyard that remains one of the oldest of its kind in Bavaria. Visitors enter through a small porch on the east wing where the Lamberg and Scaliger coats of arms are displayed. Inside, the eastern tract preserves the remains of the square bergfried with walls more than a metre thick and a vaulted basement once used as a dungeon. Above, the late-Gothic chapel of Saint George, rebuilt in 1513, has an altar set in a granite-corbelled oriel. Outside, the castle hillside shelters an arboretum begun in the mid-20th century and a teaching orchard open to the public.