Grünenberg Castle, Melchnau

The hilltop complex survives as a three-part ruin along a ridge, with individual strongholds set within their own enclosures and separated by broad neck ditches. Builders left the outer spur of the hill deliberately unoccupied and protected the ensemble by cutting defensive trenches across necks of the ridge. The earliest stone phase, dating to the 12th century, consisted of a curtain wall that enclosed the plateau between two such ditches.

At the northwestern corner of the inner enclosure stood an early tower, replaced later by a larger donjon; nearby a south residence sat against the curtain wall. The main southern entrance originally lay in the southern wall and was reached from outside by a ramp or bridge along the hillside. By the 13th century the north residence was considerably widened to span the castle’s full width, creating a representative knights’ hall and additional domestic apartments for several households.

A chapel dedicated to Saint George occupies part of the south residence complex. Around 1270 the chapel received a floor of relief-decorated clay tiles made at the Cistercian monastery of St. Urban; much of that tiled pavement survives in situ. The chapel and its medieval tiles were investigated in 1949 and were restored and protected during work in the 1990s, today lying beneath a modern shelter of wood, glass and copper.

Fourteenth-century alterations are archaeologically visible in the access and service arrangements. A new entrance defended by a drawbridge and an outer defensive enclosure was added, and the former southern gate was bricked up so the interior space behind it could hold an oven. A large circular oven was also built on the western side of the courtyard during that century. The castle originally relied on a sod shaft well nearly 27 metres deep for water; this well was filled in in the 14th century and thereafter an external wooden pipeline is recorded as supplying water to the site.

Construction techniques include masonry where the curtain wall was built with a silicate-rich core and a facing of roughly trimmed local sandstone blocks quarried from trenches near the hill. A well house and a chapel annex attached to the south residence probably date to the 13th century. The standing masonry was conserved during work from 1992 to 1998 after parts of the south wall had been at risk of collapse in the late 20th century, while nineteenth-century reports claim the tower was intentionally demolished for safety. The overall appearance today is that of fragmentary medieval walls and foundations, with the chapel’s tiled floor preserved under its protective shelter.