Albrechtsburg

The Albrechtsburg is a Late Gothic castle erected from 1471 till about 1495. It is located in the town centre of Meissen in the German state of Saxony. It is situated on a hill above the river Elbe, adjacent to the Meissen Cathedral.

In 929 King Henry I of Germany subdued the Slavic Glomacze tribe at the Siege of Gana and built a fortress within their settlement area, situated on a rock high above the Elbe river. This castle, called Misnia after a nearby creek, became the nucleus of the town and from 965 the residence of the Margraves of Meissen, who in 1423 acquired the Electorate of Saxony.

In 1423 Frederick I was appointed Elector of Saxony. His grandsons, Ernst and Albrecht, ruled over Saxony and Thuringia together from 1464 to 1485 and commissioned the master builder Arnold von Westfalen to build the first German palace on the site of the old margravial castle in 1471.

Albrechtsburg Castle never actually became a centre of Wettin's court. While construction was still in progress, the builders agreed in 1485 on a division of their territory. The joint government of the two brothers was abolished and the land was divided into two parts. Albrecht received essentially the Margraviate of Meissen with the newly built castle and the later Thuringian district, his brother Ernst the remaining Thuringian areas and the Duchy of Saxony with Wittenberg, to which the electorate was bound.. Between 1495 and 1500, construction work was halted during the interior finishing work in the upper northern parts.

It was not until 1521 that the son of Duke Albrecht, Duke Georg (1500-1539), these areas were completed by Jakob Heilmann. From this period are the loop ribbed vault in the style of Benedikt Ried, who worked in Prague, on the first floor of the north-eastern building and a fireplace in the room above. At that time the sculptor Christoph Walther I was also commissioned to create figural reliefs for the balustrades of the Great Staircase Tower, the frames of which show typical early Renaissance forms.

The castle was christened "Albrechtsburg" in 1676 after one of its first lords. But it was Albrecht's son, Georg the Bearded, who first took possession of Albrechtsburg Castle as his residence. During the Thirty Years' War the castle was badly damaged. Since then it has stood empty.

Text adapted from “Albrechtsburg” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Albrechtsburg ranks #828 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #67 of the 492 mapped in Germany. Founded 929, it is older than 94% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 129 atlas entries founded in the 10th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 6,779 times in the last 60 days, more than 88% of the atlas. 4 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Dresden, 23 km away. See how Germany compares in the castle statistics.

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