Burg Turmberg

The Turmberg-Ruine stands on the 256-metre summit of the Turmberg ridge, 1 000 metres east of Durlach’s centre. Once called Burg Hohenberg, it was built in the late 11th century by the counts of Hohenberg as their family seat. Later owners included the counts of Grötzingen, the Staufer and the margraves of Baden. In 1279 Bishop Konrad III of Lichtenberg destroyed the castle, leaving only the keep, which became a lookout post in the mid-16th century. The ruins still show parts of the two-metre-thick polygonal ring wall and the square residential tower. The 25-metre sandstone keep, with walls 2.5 metres thick and a high entrance 9 metres above ground, survives as the observation tower. A neck ditch and the original alarm gun or bell pillar add to the site’s historic character. Visitors climb the concrete stairs inside the keep to two viewing platforms. The lower one, at 16.3 metres, bridges to the western pillar that once held the alarm gun or bell. The upper platform, at 29.6 metres, offers wide views across Karlsruhe, the Rhine plain and as far as the Palatinate Forest and the Vosges. On the platform stands a 19th-century geodetic pillar from the European Gradmessung, renewed in 1951, and a First World War memorial plaque is fixed to the pillar’s valley side.