Hohenzollern

The Hohenzollern is a striking mountain rising to 858 metres near Hechingen in Baden-Württemberg. The summit carries the Burg Hohenzollern, a castle whose present structure dates from the 19th century. The northern slopes belong to Hechingen while the summit itself lies within the hamlet of Zimmern, part of Bisingen. The mountain gives its name to the Zollernalb region on the western edge of the Swabian Alb. It stands about one kilometre in front of the main escarpment and is a classic example of a witness mountain formed in a fault zone called the Hohenzollerngraben. Erosion has preserved the Zeller Horn, the Hohenzollern itself and the Wilhelmshöhe further northwest. A near-natural beech forest clothes its lower slopes. The peak is built of well-bedded limestone that rises steeply above softer Middle Jurassic clays. The name first appears in 1061 in Berthold of Reichenau’s chronicle, where Burchardus and Wezil are called ‘de Zolorin’. Locally the hill is still known as the Zoller or Zollerberg. The castle was first raised in the 11th century and rebuilt twice before the present 19th-century version was completed. The Zoller remains at the heart of the traditional Hohenzollern song.