Veste Niederhaus

The Veste Niederhaus stands on a rocky tongue of land where the Ilz flows into the Danube below Passau’s higher fortress, the Oberhaus. The spur belongs to Passau’s Altstadt quarter, part of the Bschütt district on the right bank of the Ilz. Archaeologists list medieval and early modern remains here under a Bavarian monument code. The site also carries a separate monument record as a building of Passau. From above, the castle’s walls drop steeply to the water on three sides. Its first structure appeared in 737 as a temporary refuge given by Duke Odilo to Bishop Vivilo for displaced nuns. By 1250 a stone keep already stood, with records of an ‘old’ and ‘new’ castle under Prince-Bishop Otto von Lonsdorf. The names Oberhaus and Niederhaus date from the mid-14th century. In 1358 a cellar vault became the Pilgrimskeller, holding thirteen beds. After a 1435 explosion, Prince-Bishop Leonhard von Laiming rebuilt the halls praised by the future Pope Pius II in 1444. By the 17th century the fortress served as a prison for rebellious clergy. Today the ruins include the four-storey keep shortened in 1805, the half-standing bergfried, and the Ilzdurchbruch tunnel driven in 1762. A haubitze battery was added to the walls in 1815. Above the site the 1869 Kettensteg once linked the Ilzstadt to the old town until replaced by the Luitpoldbrücke. The Veste passed through painterly hands before the Brunner family restored it from 1996 and won the Bavarian Denkmalschutzmedaille in 2008. Though privately owned, the stone shell still shows the Danube bend, the Ilz’s green gorge, and the Oberhaus rising on its crag.