Burg Empne

Burg Empne, also called Burg Gronau, was a medieval lowland castle by the Leine in Gronau, Lower Saxony. It stood on a branch of the river in the south-eastern corner of the town and formed part of Gronau’s medieval town wall. The first mention of the castle comes from the 12th century, when a comital family probably took its name from the site. In 1228 the bishops of Hildesheim acquired the castle and destroyed it in 1278. Historians still debate whether the original stronghold lay a few hundred metres east of the Leine near the vanished village of Empne or right on the riverbank where it may have been rebuilt when Gronau was laid out around 1298 by Bishop Siegfried II. After another destruction in the Hildesheim Stiftsfehde of 1522 the site became an administrative farm. Today a restored wellhead marks the spot, and beneath the farmyard archaeologists found in 2009 the foundations of a building with two stone drainage channels built into the town wall. The outer curtain wall of the castle appears to have merged with the town’s enclosing defences. Close by rises the Schiefer Turm, a ten-metre-high remnant of the town wall that leans slightly off vertical. Visitors can walk the old town wall and see the leaning tower beside the castle site. The restored wellhead stands in the former farmyard, and the two stone gutters in the masonry show where water once flowed from the castle buildings. The surrounding streets follow the line of the medieval defences, giving a clear sense of how the castle and town once fitted together.