Bürglischloss

The castle occupies a narrow, two‑part mound projecting from the hillside, aligned roughly from the northeast toward the south‑southwest and filling about 1,200 square metres. The layout follows the form of a spur castle, where the natural slope of the spur was shaped by man to create two distinct defensive platforms separated by a deep neck ditch. The whole ridge measures about one hundred metres in length.

The dividing neck ditch that cuts across the spur measures roughly fourteen and a half metres across and reaches five to six metres in depth, forming the principal barrier between the two terraces. The northern terrace extends for about fifty‑five metres with a width of twelve to fifteen metres, while the southern terrace is about thirty‑five metres long and between fifteen and eighteen metres wide. Along the rim of the site a former ring ditch runs around the hill, up to five metres wide, and lies some five metres below the plateau on the northern side and roughly ten metres below the plateau on the southern side.

Earthworks and building collapse mark much of the surface. A near‑one‑metre high outer fore‑rampart survives on the slope, and several zones of fallen masonry indicate where walls once stood, including a pronounced collapse area immediately beside the neck ditch. In the eastern sector of the southern platform a long rectangular hollow has been recorded and is interpreted as the footprint of a major building, possibly the principal hall of the complex.

The northern platform is itself divided by a partly erased internal neck ditch that leads up to a small, higher plateau on the northeast side, raised by one to three metres above the surrounding terrace. At the centre of this higher spot a roughly one‑metre high mound stands within a scatter of collapse measuring about ten to twelve metres across, interpreted as the remains of a tower. A faint transverse wall or rampart on the slope facing the mountain appears consistent with an outer enclosure that once strengthened that side of the stronghold.

A modern two‑storey wooden observation tower occupies part of the site, built in 1998 where a television repeater had stood since 1971. The bell found in 1998 is a small bronze instrument, about 125 millimetres in diameter and 157 millimetres high, cast in a copper‑tin alloy and bearing decorative features that informed its dating to around 1050. Specialists involved in its recovery and study have proposed Reichenau as its likely origin and suggested it may have served either a village chapel at the edge of Gailingen in the eleventh century or a chapel connected with the castle. The site commands long views across the Rhine valley, stretching toward Vorarlberg and the Bernese Alps. The easiest pedestrian approach is from the east, from the parking area of the nearby neurological hospital.