St. Bartholomäus Egloffstein

St. Bartholomäus is a small Lutheran parish church perched on a rocky spur above the Trubach valley in Egloffstein. It stands inside the medieval castle walls on a terrace cut into the eastern slope of the Rabenstein hill. A single flight of stone steps, the Burgsteig, leads up from the village street to the churchyard gate. The building is separated from the southern castle front only by a narrow alley. The church replaced an earlier 12th-century church that once stood in Dietersberg village. The church was built between 1750 and 1752 by two brothers, Albrecht Christoph Karl and Ludwig von Egloffstein. Their coats of arms appear above the main door alongside the name of the architect, Johann David Steingruber. The interior follows the ‘peasant Baroque’ style with two tiers of windows and a full-width balcony. The most striking feature is the pulpit-altar, a rare arrangement in this region that recalls the style of the Margraves of Ansbach. Inside, the plain white walls frame a richly carved pulpit-altar. Two lime-wood figures, Moses and Aaron, stand beside the pulpit, and a pelican feeding its young tops the canopy. Above the altar hangs a crucifix, and the ceiling shows three large frescoes: the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Trinity, and the Good Shepherd. The church’s own burial vault once held generations of the Egloffstein family. The building was restored in 1850 and again in 1896 by other members of the same family.