Burg Hornfels

Burg Hornfels stands on the Hornfelsen, a 350-metre hill northwest of Grenzach in the Dinkelberg range. The rocky outcrop once jutted 150 metres towards the High Rhine, commanding the narrow valley before Basel’s knee in the river. Today the crest shows the grassed remains of two ramparts built a thousand years apart. The lower slopes carry Germany’s south-westernmost vineyard, planted where stone quarries once lowered the ground. Archaeologists found Hallstatt-era graves two kilometres east in 1903–04, and later recognised traces of an even older Urnenfelder settlement beneath the medieval wall. Excavations in 1947–49, led by Wolfgang Kimmig with support from Freiburg University and Swiss scholars Rudolf Laur-Belart and Gerold Walser, uncovered two construction phases. The first, a dry-stone wall about 900 BC, was later covered by a steep earthwork built in haste around AD 900, perhaps to repel Magyar raids or control the river road. Visitors walk the surviving rampart, 75 metres long and up to 17 metres wide, rising eight metres above an inner ditch. The inner slope climbs at 23 degrees, the outer at 40 degrees, with no palisade or gate found. A shallow outer ditch runs 20 metres east of the wall. Below, the vineyard rows and nearby Buchswald nature reserve frame views across the High Rhine valley toward Basel. The site lies within a landscape protection area, reached by the Markgräfler Wiiwegli wine trail and the Schwarzwaldwestweg long-distance path.