LandmarksOrHistoricalBuildings

Middle castle

Schloßsteige 10, 69239 Neckarsteinach

Castles

Mittelburg Castle, the second oldest of Neckarsteinach‘s four castles, was built around 1200 and is privately owned.

The origins of the castle are not entirely clear; depending on the source, it is thought to have been built around 1200 or 1165. It could have been built by Conrad I von Steinach, the youngest son of Bligger II von Steinach, or by the Counts of Lauffen, the feudal lords of the von Steinach family.

At the beginning, half of the castle was a fief of Worms and the other half allodial property. In the first almost 400 years, between its construction and 1550, the ownership of the two halves changed frequently. In 1551, it came to the Landschaden von Steinach family as a fief and was rebuilt in the Renaissance style.

The Neckar side of the castle was then opened up into Renaissance arcades, while the other three sides remained untouched in their medieval fortified state. The castle was used as the residence of the Landschaden von Steinach family and their heirs and remained in the structural condition described above throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Around 1835, however, it had to make way for a neo-Gothic reconstruction. The resulting silhouette, which looks strange in the Neckar valley, is reminiscent of the castles rebuilt on the Middle Rhine in the 19th century.