Ehemalige Burg

The Eybburg was a medieval water castle in the hamlet of Eybburg, now part of the market town of Arberg in Mittelfranken. It stood on a site first recorded in 1416 as the Lochhof or Lohhof, a feudal seat of the hereditary cup-bearers of Eichstätt. The family who held it took the name Schenk von Arberg. By the 14th century the fortified seat had a reputation as a robber-knight’s nest. After a dispute over the inheritance in 1484, Bishop Wilhelm of Eichstätt ordered the property sold and the proceeds used to support the widow and children. The castle was rebuilt in 1487 by Ludwig von Eyb-Sommersdorf and renamed Eybburg. In 1533 Bishop Gabriel von Eyb granted the Erbschenken office to Georg Ludwig the Younger of Eyb and his heirs, who became the von Eyb zu Eybburg line. In 1622 the castle was sold back to the Bishop of Eichstätt and gradually reverted to a farm. By 1891 the last remains of the at least ten-metre-high great hall had been removed. Today a stretch of curtain wall with two shell towers survives on the northern side. Inside the farm buildings remnants of the zwinger wall can still be seen. The gatehouse to the eastern outer bailey was later turned into a small 15th-century chapel with a pitched roof. A broad moat with an outer rampart encircles the site, and in 1942 the stump of a keep was still visible. The farmyard now occupies the former inner ward, but the outlines of the vanished buildings remain clear in the landscape.