Schloss Kronburg

Schloss Kronburg stands above the village of Kronburg in Swabia, on a hill 743 metres above sea level. The castle was built after 1200 by a ministerial family of the Staufer and first appears in a document of 1227 naming Rudolf von Cronburg. Over the next centuries the fortress passed through many hands, from the Habsburgs to the Rechberg family, who turned it into a residential castle between 1509 and 1536. The Westernach family then held it for nearly two centuries, fortifying it during the War of the Spanish Succession. The castle’s four round towers were partly demolished in 1704 by French troops but rebuilt and topped with onion domes and weather vanes. Inside, Augsburg craftsmen made the locks and fittings, while the Kempten court painter Franz Joseph Hörmann painted the coats of arms. The north wing still shows remains of the original tufa stone keep, and the east wing carries a 16th-century coat of arms above its gateway. The south wing houses a two-aisled hall with ribbed vaulting and a chapel in its basement. Visitors walk through the east wing gateway into the inner courtyard, where the wings form a three-sided enclosure. The north wing’s ground floor has a vaulted room supported by two tufa columns, and its second floor preserves a wooden ceiling from about 1478. The east wing’s upper rooms display 18th-century canvas wallpapers and a mirror bearing the 1704 coat of arms of Bishop Eustach Egolf von Westernach. The south wing’s chapel and vaulted hall remain largely unchanged since the 16th century.