Liebenzell Castle (german: Burg Liebenzell) is a

hill castle A hill castle or mountain castle is a castle built on a natural feature that stands above the surrounding terrain. It is a term derived from the German ''Höhenburg'' used in categorising castle sites by their topographical location. Hill castles a ...

on a sloping

hill spur A spur is a lateral ridge or tongue of land descending from a hill, mountain or main crest of a ridge. It can also be defined as another hill or mountain range which projects in a lateral direction from a main hill or mountain range. Examples of ...

on the sides of the ''Schlossberg'' ("castle hill") above the town of Bad Liebenzell in the district of

Calw Calw (; previously pronounced and sometimes spelled ''Kalb'' accordingly) is a town in the middle of Baden-Württemberg in the south of Germany, capital and largest town of the district Calw. It is located in the Northern Black Forest and is a ...

in the south German state of

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...

. The fortification was once the most important castle in the Württemberg part of the

Black Forest The Black Forest (german: Schwarzwald ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is t ...

History

The castle was built in the 12th century by the counts of Calw. In 1196 the counts of Eberstein were recorded as the castle's owners. From 1220 to 1230 the castle was extended. It was destroyed in the 16th century and in 1692 and rebuilt in 1954. Today the castle is owned by the International Forum of Liebenzell Castle. It is used as a youth training centre for the Bad Liebenzell International Youth Forum and has a restaurant.

Layout

The castle comprises an irregular, pentagonal fortification with a mighty shield wall, into which a square ''

bergfried ''Bergfried'' (plural: ''bergfriede''; English: ''belfry''; French: ''tour-beffroi''; Spanish: ''torre del homenaje'') is a tall tower that is typically found in castles of the Middle Ages in German-speaking countries and in countries under Germ ...

'' with a

garderobe Garderobe is a historic term for a room in a medieval castle. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' gives as its first meaning a store-room for valuables, but also acknowledges "by extension, a private room, a bed-chamber; also a privy". The word der ...

has been integrated. The great hall (''

Palas A ''palas'' () is a German term for the imposing or prestigious building of a medieval ''Pfalz'' or castle that contained the great hall. Such buildings appeared during the Romanesque period (11th to 13th century) and, according to Thompson ...

'') is decorated with ornamental

ogival An ogive ( ) is the roundly tapered end of a two-dimensional or three-dimensional object. Ogive curves and surfaces are used in engineering, architecture and woodworking. Etymology The earliest use of the word ''ogive'' is found in the 13th c ...

openings (''Spitzbogenöffnungen''). The six-storey ''bergfried'' has a height of 32 metres and has an entrance six metres in height, a wall thickness of two metres and an area of about 9 by 9 metres.

Sources

* Gedat, Gustav-Adolf (1963). ''Burg Liebenzell. Kleines Modell für ein neues Europa''. Thorbecke, Constance/Stuttgart. * Krahe, Friedrich-Wilhelm (1994). ''Burgen des deutschen Mittelalters. Grundriss-Lexikon''. Flechsig Verlag, Würzburg, . * Zimmermann, Wolfgang (1981). ''Unterwegs zu Burgen und Schlössern im Schwarzwald. Ausflüge und Wanderungen zu den schönsten und interessantesten Burgen und Schlössern''. Fink-Kümmerly und Frey, Ostfildern, .

External links

Liebenzell Castle at burgenwelt.de

Liebenzell Castle International Forum
{{Authority control Hill castles