Burg Rohr

Burg Rohr was the medieval stronghold of the Rohrer family in Unterrohr, a village now part of Pocking in Lower Bavaria. The site appears in records as early as 1033, when a Rafolt de Rore is mentioned. By the 12th century the family served the bishops of Regensburg and Bamberg as ministeriales. An Eberhardus de Rore lived there in 1134, probably in a wooden fort before stone buildings were erected. The Rohrers also held a castle in the Kremstal valley, and their burial place was the parish church at Rotthalmünster. The late medieval stone house stood surrounded by a moat fed by a pond, as shown on Michael Wening’s copperplate of 1721. A two-storey manor with a half-hipped roof was reached by a simple wooden bridge. Two small watch-towers and a machicolation guarded the entrance, while outside the moat a steward’s farm provided produce for the household. The estate was called a praedium nobile in Apian’s 16th-century topography. After the death of Count Closen in 1780 local farmers bought the site and dismantled it for building stone. Today no visible traces remain in Unterrohr to mark the vanished stronghold. The vanished castle survives only in documents, maps and the Wening engraving.