Tomburg Castle

The Tomburg is a ruined castle on the Tomberg hill near Wormersdorf, a village in the municipality of Rheinbach close to Bonn. The hill itself rises 316 metres above sea level and forms part of a small nature reserve with rare plants. The Tomberg is a basalt dome left by an ancient volcano whose outer layers have eroded away. Traces of Roman settlement on the hill date to the 4th century. Around the year 900 a hilltop castle was built and enlarged in later centuries. The castle’s history includes Count Palatine Ezzo and his wife Matilda, sister of Emperor Otto III, who lived there around 1000. Their daughter Richeza became Queen of Poland and their son Otto inherited the Palatinate before dying at the Tomburg in 1047. Ownership passed to the Duke of Cleves in 1090 and then to the Lords of Müllenark in 1230, who took the name von Tomburg. By the 14th century the castle lost its military value with the arrival of black powder artillery and later became a refuge for robber barons. It was destroyed in a siege on 7 September 1473 and never rebuilt. Visitors today find the remaining seventy per cent of the hill and parts of the castle’s bergfried still standing. The castle well descends forty-six metres and was cleared in 1883 by a local society that also recovered stone cannonballs. The hill remains a quiet nature reserve with rare plants. A stylised image of the Tomberg appears on packaging for sugar beet syrup made nearby. Nearby barracks and a secondary school bear the name Tomburg, keeping the castle’s memory alive.