Schloss Polsingen

Schloss Polsingen stands east of the village centre on a gentle rise, surrounded by a rectangular moat and high walls with round towers. The main building rises three storeys under a low hipped roof and dates from the mid-17th century. Four corner towers and stretches of the 16th-century curtain wall still mark the outline of the former fortress. Inside the courtyard an iron garden fountain from 1858 rises beside the chapel, which was fitted into a former 17th- or 18th-century barn in the late 19th century. The castle was first raised by the lords of See before passing in 1517 or 1518 to Margrave Casimir of Brandenburg. In 1580 Hans Sigismund von Wöllwarth bought it and his family kept it until 1857. Wilhelm Löhe of Neuendettelsau then acquired the building and from 1865 turned it into an institutional home. Today the estate belongs to the Diakonie Neuendettelsau and continues to serve that purpose. Visitors walk across the moat bridge and enter through the old gatehouse into a quiet courtyard. The three-storey main block shows simple stonework and small square windows. The surviving fragments of the 16th-century enceinte give a sense of the former strength of the place. The late-19th-century chapel, with its modest furnishings, sits beside the iron fountain, adding a domestic note to the medieval silhouette.