Schloss Wallhausen

Schloss Wallhausen stands at the southern edge of Wallhausen village in Saxony-Anhalt. It occupies ground that may once have held an early-Saxon farm from Carolingian times. By the 10th and 11th centuries a royal palace of Saxon kings and emperors stood here. Around 1150 a water castle with a St Martin’s chapel was built on the same spot. The present building keeps only small fragments of its medieval past, including a large two-aisled late-Gothic vaulted room in the basement of the west wing. The main Renaissance palace was constructed between 1606 and 1613 by Ludwig von der Asseburg. He added the west wing, a tower and adjoining living quarters. During the Thirty Years War the castle suffered damage and was altered several times until about 1650. The plan is shaped like a capital H, with east and west wings drawn out at each end into projecting bays. A round tower capped with a baroque dome rises at the north-west corner. Above the second floor the centre of each façade is marked by a stone balcony carried on brackets. Sandstone doorways, cornices and pilasters once decorated the walls but are now badly weathered. After 1945 the Asseburg family lost the castle through land reform. The state turned it into a school, using the vaulted hall as a gym. In 2005 the Meier-Föllmi family bought the building and opened a hotel with a restaurant. In 2024 René Huber-Meier and his wife Lilly took over its management. A fire in the roof on 30 July 2026 destroyed the attic and much of the second floor, but the main vaulted room and the wings remain intact.