Château du Schlossberg, Forbach

The site preserves the footprint of a fortified settlement that developed in successive medieval and early modern phases. The layout shows a dwelling complex within a surrounding defensive wall, anchored by a central keep in the oldest phase and later supplemented by corner towers and bastions. Excavation and building work over the centuries record repeated reuse of masonry and the layering of fortifications.

The earliest confirmed structural phase includes a palace inside a surrounding defensive wall with a square central keep, dating to the mid-1200s. The entrance used at that time aligns with the gate later identified as the fourth gate. Substantial masonry from later reconstruction survives as a large keep built after 1436; its walls remain massive, with surviving thicknesses measured at about 2.90 metres on the west side and about 4.30 metres on the south side. These heavy walls attest to the keep’s defensive purpose and the scale of 15th-century rebuilding.

Work carried out after the mid-1400s by Arnold VI of Sierck expanded the defensive circuit and added a new entrance, now the third gate, and a tower sited where the modern tower stands. Mid-1500s remodelling converted the place into a Renaissance fortified house with a new corner tower and a bastion. In 1607 additional fortification work added another bastion, and excavations in the 1800s uncovered evidence that the castle at that time included at least six towers, indicating a complex multi-towered plan before the destruction of the 1630s.

The octagonal tower that dominates the hill today was erected in 1891 by Paul Tornow and rises to almost 28 metres. It stands not on the footprint of the medieval square keep but on the location of an earlier round corner tower once nicknamed the “red tower” that overlooked the Saar, which is why the modern tower is also called Tour Saareck. The tower suffered damage in World War II and later weathering; it was restored in the 1950s and has undergone subsequent conservation work.

The park and its ancillary buildings reflect later phases of landscaping and reuse. During the German period the grounds contained a windmill, a Swiss-style chalet, decorative basins, and a rose garden; these features were removed after World War II and replaced by open green areas. The forester’s house below the hill, originally the park keeper’s residence, survives from these earlier installations. The Burghof farmhouse dates from around 1900, was restored and enlarged, housed an open-air school in 1919, and now contains a restaurant; a congress hall in the early 20th-century Adt style was built adjacent after partial fire damage. At the base of the tower Gustave Adt installed around 1895 a large Bismarck medallion between two 1870 war cannons on the medieval ruins, a setting once known as Bismarckplatz; that medallion has since been replaced by one depicting Jean Nicolas Houchard.