Schloss Hof

Schloss Hof lies just north of Cham in the Upper Palatinate, on a low hill above the Regen valley. The village of Hof shares its name with the vanished castle, and the site is marked as an archaeological monument. Medieval records first mention a fortified house here in the late 15th century. Over the centuries the estate passed through several noble families, from the Präckendorfer to the Püdensdorfer, then the Gerbel and finally the Moro brothers in the 19th century. By 1848 Bavarian law ended the feudal rights attached to the place, and the last leasehold was redeemed in 1850. The castle itself was a modest two-storey building with a pitched roof and a small northern porch. A second tower stood to the south, linked by a connecting wing to the main house. Unlike true fortresses, it had only light wooden fencing around the slope. Michael Wening’s 17th-century engraving shows a quiet, unfortified residence set among trees. Today the only standing remains are the vaulted cellars built of granite rubble in the 14th or 15th century. Their plastered tunnel vaults still carry the imprint of the formwork boards used when they were laid. Visitors walk across grassy terraces where the old forecourt once lay. The cellars are open at ground level, their cool stone corridors running beneath the vanished house. From the hilltop the view stretches over the Regen floodplain to Cham’s spires. The site is quiet, marked only by a small information board and the low stone walls that outline the vanished wings. Archaeologists continue to study the foundations, which survive just below the turf.