Cultural heritage D-3-7040-0174 in Pfatter

Schloss Pfatter was a two-storey building with two round corner towers and stepped gables, standing beside an old arm of the Danube in the village of Pfatter. The site appears in the Bavarian monument list as an archaeological find, recorded under number D-3-7040-0174. After the Thirty Years’ War, the court for the Haidau district moved here temporarily while the lower castle at Mintraching was rebuilt. Records show that Pfatter already had a court building at that time, though its exact age is unknown. The castle became the preferred seat of the judges after the war. Inside the parish church of Mariä Himmelfahrt, several gravestones of judges and their wives survive from the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1865 the building burned down and was later demolished, leaving no visible remains of the main structure or its outbuildings. A nearby burial ground, also listed as a monument, suggests that executed criminals were buried close to the castle walls. Today the site is marked by a grassy rise beside the river, with only the old church and the gravestones to indicate its former importance. The Danube’s quiet backwater flows past the spot where the towers once stood. Visitors can walk the riverside path and see the church’s weathered memorials, which recall the castle’s vanished role as a centre of law in the Upper Palatinate.