Virneburg Castle

Virneburg Castle (German: Burgruine Virneburg) is a ruined hill castle on a slate hill, 430 m above sea level (NHN), around which the Nitzbach stream flows. It stands above the village of Virneburg in the county of Mayen-Koblenz in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

The castle was probably built in the second half of the 12th century as a fief of the count palatine. The first record of the castle can be found in an 1192 document, in which the brothers Godfrey and Frederick of Virneburg gave their castle Vernenburgh together with the county and all its estate to the Archbishop of Trier, John I, as a fiefdom. This document is not preserved in the original, the 16th-century copy is either a faulty translation or a forgery due to the wording contained therein, which was not yet customary around 1200.

The lords of Virneburg, later elevated to the rank of count, are first mentioned in a document by the Archbishop of Trier, Poppo, in 1042 where a certain Bernhardus de Virneburch is recorded. At that time, feudal sovereignty had passed to the counts of Sayn, but John of Sayn relinquished it in 1358 to the counts palatine, with the exception of the castle, which was still mentioned in 1506 as a male fief to the counts of Sayn, even though the counts of Virneburg no longer recognised their feudal sovereignty.

In 1339, Count Rupert of Virneburg gave part of the castle to the Elector of Trier, Baldwin to pay off a debt. It refers for the first time to the hoechste thurn ("highest tower"), probably the old bergfried built when the castle was constructed.

In 1414, the counts of Virneburg had to hand over the rest of the castle to the Archbishop, Werner of Falkenstein, to whom the county had always been a thorn in the side. Only a few years later, however, the people of Virneburg succeeded in redeeming their castle from being an enfeoffment of Trier. On the death of Count Cunos of Virneburg in 1545, the Virneburg family died out.

Its heirs were the counts of Mark-Arenberg and then the counts of Manderscheid-Blankenheim before being confiscated a little later by Trier as a terminated fiefdom. Following an objection by the counts of Manderscheid-Schleiden, however, it was returned to them in 1549 as a fiefdom. The property was acquired in 1600 by Löwenstein-Wertheim.

An inventory of the castle made at that time lists twelve rooms.

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

Virneburg Castle ranks #6,445 of 8,134 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #487 of the 505 mapped in Germany. Founded 1042, it is older than 91% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 325 atlas entries founded in the 11th century. 14 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Koblenz, 37 km away. It is one of the 43 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of the Moselle. See how Germany compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗