France · 12th century
The Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg (French: [ʃɑto dy o kœniksbuʁ]; German: Hohkönigsburg), sometimes also Haut-Kœnigsbourg, is a medieval castle located in the commune of Orschwiller in the Bas-Rhin département of Alsace, France. Located in the Vosges mountains just west of Sélestat, situated in a strategic area on a rocky spur overlooking the Upper Rhine Plain, it was used by successive powers from the Middle Ages until the Thirty Years' War when it was abandoned. From 1900 to 1908 it was rebuilt at the behest of the German kaiser Wilhelm II. Today it is a major tourist site, attracting more than 500,000 visitors a year.
Text adapted from “Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg ranks #226 of 9,079 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #25 of the 793 mapped in France. Founded 1114, it is older than 85% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 756 atlas entries founded in the 12th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 26,173 times in the last 60 days, more than 98% of the atlas. 25 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Colmar, 19 km away. It is one of the 63 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of Alsace. It is stop 24 of 32 on the Alsace castle route, Wissembourg to Mulhouse. See how France compares in the castle statistics.
View on the interactive castle map →