Schloss Gärtringen

Schloss Gärtringen stands beside the Veitskirche in the village of Gärtringen, a long, low building with a plastered ground floor, timbered upper storey and hipped roof topped by a gabled dormer. Two barns and the main block form a courtyard, while across the road a walled garden still shows traces of its 18th-century layout. The whole ensemble occupies the site of two free-noble houses that stood here in the 16th and 17th centuries. The present structure was commissioned in 1728 by Johann Heinrich Hiller von Gärtringen and built by Georg Friedrich Majer, who incorporated parts of an earlier building on the south side. The entrance portal, carved by Marx Hepp, bears the combined coats of arms of the Hiller and Preysing families. The future general-major Johann Eberhard Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen grew up within these walls, and later generations added a conservatory in 1893. Brothers Freiherr Johann Hiller and Freiherr Friedrich Hiller jointly owned the property in the 1950s, and the castle remains in private hands today. Visitors walk past the Veitskirche to reach the courtyard framed by the main house and its two barns. The plastered walls and timber-framed upper storey show the building’s age, while the hipped roof and dormer give it a calm, symmetrical outline. Inside the walled garden across the road, box hedges and gravel paths recall the 18th-century design, and the whole setting offers a quiet glimpse of aristocratic life in southern Germany.