Burgruine Hilgartsberg

The ruined Hilgartsberg castle stands on a steep left bank of the Danube where the river leaves the Dungau plain and cuts through the southern foothills of the Bavarian Forest. It overlooks the market town of Hofkirchen, about three and a half kilometres to the north-west. The site is protected both as a listed monument and as an archaeological zone containing medieval and early modern remains. The castle passed through many noble hands in the 12th and 13th centuries, from the counts of Sulzbach to the Ortenburgs and the dukes of Bavaria. After a fire in 1626 the Fugger family enlarged the complex, but in 1742 Austrian troops burned it down during the War of Austrian Succession. The ruins were later used as a village school until 1970, and today a local association organises summer plays and a Christmas market. Visitors enter across a ditch and through an outer gate into the walled courtyard. The medieval chapel of St George, restored in 2003, still shows Romanesque walls and later ribbed vaulting with grotesque decoration. Beyond another gatehouse lies the inner bailey, where a well leads to an underground passage beneath the curtain wall. From the platform above the chapel there is a wide view over the Danube valley.