Burg Zillenhart

Burg Zillenhart stands on the Schlossbuckel hill, 700 metres southwest of Ursenwang church. The site is 425.6 metres above sea level in the Albvorland region of Baden-Württemberg. It once belonged to the lords of Zillenhart, who served the counts of Helfenstein. The first written mention dates from 1241, when Syfried von Zillenhart appears as a Helfenstein vassal. A later Seuridus de Zullhard, who had taken mercenary work in Tuscany, built a chapel nearby around 1350 and dedicated it to St Gotthardt. The chapel gave its name to the new settlement of St Gotthardt, now part of Göppingen. The ruined castle occupies a steep-sided spur that drops away to the west and southwest. A small mound about 30 to 40 metres across is surrounded by a ditch up to four metres deep and an outer rampart up to 1.5 metres high. Archaeologists from the University of Tübingen, working with the Kreisarchäologie Göppingen, surveyed the site in 2020 using geophysical prospecting. An information board was installed in 2012 to explain the remains. The castle was already in ruins by 1604. Visitors reach the Burgstall along quiet paths through farmland and woodland. On the hilltop they find the low earthworks and shallow depressions that mark the former buildings. The chapel of St Gotthardt, long vanished, once stood below the spur near the old trade route between Kirchheim unter Teck and Süßen. The site offers wide views across the Albvorland towards the Swabian Jura. A single information board stands beside the rampart, describing what once stood on the hill.