BraubachMarksburg
The only hill castle in the gorge that was never reduced to a ruin — which makes it, awkwardly, both the most informative and the least typical building on this list.
- Place
- Braubach
- Chainage
- rkm 580
- Built
- c. 1117; first documented 1231
- Condition
- Complete; never destroyed
- Owner
- Deutsche Burgenvereinigung (since 1900)
- Protection
- Within the Upper Middle Rhine Valley World Heritage Site (inscribed 2002)
Origins
The castle is generally dated to about 1117, when free noblemen of Braubach are said to have raised a fortification above the town. The first secure documentary mention comes in 1231, by which point the site was in the hands of the Lords of Eppstein. The oldest fabric that can be dated with any confidence belongs to 1239, so the twelfth-century date rests on tradition rather than on stone.
In 2014 the foundations of a Romanesque chapel of the twelfth century were identified inside the courtyard, which is the closest thing to physical corroboration the early date has ever had.
Descent of ownership
The holding passed by inheritance to the Counts of Katzenelnbogen in 1283 and, when that line died out, to the Landgraves of Hesse in 1429. Hesse held it for well over four centuries, until the Prussian annexation of 1866. In 1900 the Prussian state sold it to the newly founded German Castles Association, which still owns and maintains it.
That unbroken chain of responsible owners is the whole explanation for the building's survival. Nothing about its position is more defensible than a dozen ruined neighbours.
Fabric
The keep is a bergfried of the type locally called a butter-churn tower: a tall round shaft on a square base. The core arrangement — a three-storey keep set inside a triangular curtain — is Staufer work and is still legible despite everything added on top of it.
The chapel dedicated to St Mark, from which the castle takes its modern name, dates to about 1340. From the late fifteenth century onward the defences were adapted for firearms: pointed bastions and low round towers were pushed out beyond the medieval line, and the approach was rebuilt as a stepped rock-cut ramp.
Visiting and access
The castle sits roughly 160 m above the river on the right bank, reached on foot from Braubach in twenty minutes or by road to a car park below the outer gate. The interior is shown by guided tour only; the route is steep, uneven and partly rock-cut, and there is no step-free option.