Burg Rotenburg

The Rotenburg was a medieval castle built by the Bishop of Verden between 1192 and 1198 as a border fortress. It stood on the Wümme river in the marshy mouth of the Rodau and Wiedau streams. The castle became an administrative centre and occasional residence for the bishops, who used it to escape the influence of the cathedral chapter. Over the centuries it was rebuilt many times, first as a castle, then as a Renaissance palace and later as a Dutch-style fortress with bastions. The last major works came in the 18th century when a new prison and offices were erected on the site. The castle’s heyday came under Bishop Johannes III von Asel, who added two chapels, two round towers and a library. His successor Berthold von Landsberg built a gate tower and reinforced the walls and ditches. In the Thirty Years War the fortress passed to Sweden and was modernised, but by the 18th century most of the medieval buildings had been demolished. Archaeologists have found the remains of a massive tower with walls 2.35 metres thick and traces of a gatehouse. Today only a low mound marks the former castle plateau and fragments of the last defensive ditches survive in the east. Visitors now see a quiet grassy mound where the castle once stood. A small steep bank called the Bishop’s Height is the last visible part of the fortress ramparts. Nearby, a low-lying hall house from 1779 houses the local history museum, moved here in the 1950s. The site is surrounded by the flat, wet meadows of the Wümme valley, giving a sense of how the castle once controlled the river crossing.