Burgstall Stein

Burgstall Stein stands on a rocky outcrop 755 metres above sea level, about 140 metres above the Danube valley near Fridingen. The remains rise above the Donautal, close to the ruined Stiegelesfels and the Kammfelsen rock within a nature reserve. A short distance away lies Burgstallhöhle, a cave castle hollowed from the same rock mass. The site sits in the Tuttlingen district of Baden-Württemberg, roughly 1,000 metres south-east of Fridingen’s town church. The castle was built between 1100 and 1150, probably replacing an earlier fortification in the cave below. Archaeologists found medieval pottery and examined the remnants of the keep to date the structure. By the late 13th century the site had already been abandoned. In 1381 it likely passed to the Duchy of Austria, which granted it as a Hohenburger fief to Hans von Wildenfels in 1409. That charter is the only written record of the castle. Today a 32-metre stretch of the western curtain wall, up to six metres high, and the inner shell of the keep survive. Inside the keep the space measures roughly three by 2.5 metres with walls about 2.5 metres tall. The roughly twenty-by-sixty-metre plateau is cut off from the hillside by a ten-metre-deep, horseshoe-shaped ditch. Traces of a great hall about twelve by nine metres can still be seen, including roughly hewn corner stones at its north-eastern corner. The ruins belong to the town of Fridingen and sit within a protected landscape of cliffs and wooded slopes.