Burgstall Ansberg

The Ansberg hill in Upper Franconia still shows the remains of a medieval hilltop castle. The site lies where the small St Veit’s Chapel now stands, near Dittersbrunn in the market town of Ebensfeld. The chapel occupies the former castle plateau, a long oval ridge that juts westward from the main ridge.

The castle belonged to a noble family first recorded in 1087 as Gozwin of Ansberg. By 1292 it had become a Bamberg bishopric fief held by Gundeloch of Cunstat, but it vanished from documents after 1319. Andreas Rheinthaler built the present chapel between 1717 and 1719, planting twenty-one lime trees around it. The poet Joseph Victor von Scheffel later mentioned the chapel in his 1859 Franconian song, though he placed it on the Staffelberg.

Visitors reach the oval plateau by the same eastern approach used in the Middle Ages. A low outer bank survives on the west side, while the rest of the former bailey has been levelled. A 50-metre earthwork with an inner ditch guards the gentler southwestern spur. The central mound, 3.5 metres high, marks the castle’s keep site beneath the chapel.