Kellerei Michelstadt

The surviving group of buildings is arranged around a rectangular inner courtyard that originally formed the outer bailey; the fortified core that once stood above this court no longer remains. The present south side is occupied by the main building, the west side by a large storage house, the north by the former administrative house, and the east by the former remise for carriages. A keep-like tower stands to the west of the storage building and is built into the line of the medieval town wall.

The main building on the south side carries the date 1506 and grew from three older elements later united beneath a single roof. The central portion is a timber-framed structure dating to the 1500s, while lateral wings were added in the 1600s and 1700s. Masonry adjacent to the old town wall is notably thick and the ground floor contains a room covered by a barrel vault measuring about 5.75 by 5.00 metres; an earlier pointed-arch gateway was later blocked and replaced by a round-arched door and a window. A formerly walled tower within this building was opened in 1986 to reveal a vaulted passage whose shape indicates an external drawbridge once stood against the outer face.

The large western storage building measures roughly 37 by 13 metres and supports its high cellar vault on seven considerable sandstone pillars, a construction that served long-term grain and tithe storage. The north gable bears the date 1517, and an external double-flight staircase added with the alliance coat of arms of Count Georg I of Erbach and his wife, together with the date 1539, remains visible. Upper floors have been extensively altered since their original construction, and parts of the building appear to incorporate fabric from the 1200s. Supporting walls facing the adjacent tower date to the late medieval period and resemble masonry of nearby medieval strongholds.

On the north side the former administrative house shows a sequence of rebuildings, with visible dates of 1501, 1549 and 1621. A ground-floor vault with an earthen floor points to a possible late-Gothic chapel within the lower level, and a low external garderobe bay suggests there may originally have been a surrounding ditch that could have been supplied by the nearby Kiliansfloss. These features record repeated adaptation to administrative and residential needs over the 16th and 17th centuries.

The east-side remise served historically for carriages and harness and was restored by local preservation groups; before 1993 it received the full working machinery of the Kainsbacher mill, a mill first documented in 1426. That mill operated by water until 1956 and the installed machinery now runs with electrical power. The remise thus contains early-modern mill technology repurposed within the former carriage house.

The tower to the west, known as the Diebsturm, derives from a bergfried of a pre-Frankish castle of the late 800s according to the record. Its lower chamber was built as a fully walled dungeon without door or window, with prisoners lowered by rope from above, and the tower served as the town court prison from 1315. The tower was partly ruined by collapse in 1795 and its old roof removed in 1798; the present timber-framed cap is a modern reconstruction from the later 20th century. Embedded in the tower masonry at about ten metres height is an antique relief of the Roman god Mercury; a copy remains in place and the original relief is preserved in the museum.

Archaeological interventions have left tangible traces: a 1938 trench uncovered foundations of a 7.40-metre-wide building within the courtyard area, and a 1981 trench produced burnt deposits consistent with the documented destruction of 1307. Subsequent fieldwork in 1982 yielded no further structural revelations. The ensemble that stands today therefore reflects a sequence of medieval fortification, post-medieval residential and administrative rebuilding, later collapse and 20th-century restoration.