Burg Jagsthausen

Burg Jagsthausen stands above the Jagst valley on a slope in Jagsthausen, a village in the Heilbronn district. It was begun by the Lords of Husen in the Middle Ages and later enlarged, most recently in the 1870s by August Beyer, master builder of Ulm Münster. The fortress is one of the ancestral seats of the Berlichingen family and has served since 1950 as the stage for the Burgfestspiele Jagsthausen open-air plays. The castle is still owned by the Berlichingens and was long the home of Alexandra Freifrau von Berlichingen and her late husband, former Federal President Roman Herzog. The building now houses the Schlosshotel Götzenburg. A museum in one of the corner towers displays weapons, Roman antiquities and the two original iron hands of Götz von Berlichingen, the knight who lost his right hand to a cannon shot. The castle is surrounded by a park laid out in the 19th century with romantic ruins. The medieval core survives in the palas with its knights’ hall, the women’s house with its heated chamber, the keep and the servants’ wing with large corner towers. A wide moat still encircles the whole complex.