Limburg Castle

The Burg Limburg stands on the Limberg, a 272-metre-high spur of the Kaiserstuhl massif. It rises forty metres above the Rhine near Sasbach am Kaiserstuhl in the Emmendingen district. The ruin is also called Limpurg or, in older texts, Burg Lindberg. A few hundred metres away once stood the older Alte Limburg. The present castle first appears in records between 1215 and 1221. Owners included the Zähringer, the Habsburgs, the city of Freiburg and from 1498 to 1590 the counts of Tübingen. In 1239 Heinrich von Falkenstein served as castellan here. The Habsburgs held the castle in 1215 when Albrecht of Habsburg imprisoned the abbot of Ebersmünster. By 1701 the site had become a ruin, and in 1945 Allied bombing destroyed parts of the great tower. Visitors find substantial stretches of curtain wall still standing. The core area measures forty by eighty metres and is defended by walls up to two metres thick. Three terraces once carried a well and service buildings, grand residential ranges and at the top a bergfried with attached living quarters. Steep crags protect the north and west sides, while a deep ditch guards the south and east. The southern approach probably led through the main gate.