Weisswasserstelz

The castle occupies a raised position above the north bank of the Rhine where the river narrows, a location that guarded the river channel and nearby roads. The site forms a compact medieval ensemble that included a castle courtyard in front of the main building, a mill known as the Guggen mill, and an economy yard later used as a tithe barn; the gate arch of that yard carries a keystone dated 1560. Across the water, a small island once held the related Burg Schwarzwasserstelz, and the placement of the two sites and a nearby fortification allowed close observation of the bridge and road traffic in the narrow Rhine pass.

Surviving defensive and domestic stonework dates to the castle’s medieval phase first recorded in the 12th century. Substantial fragments of the enclosing wall remain, preserved in places to a height equivalent to two storeys. Parts of a circular tower and a half-round tower on the east side survive as masonry rises; a continuous ring wall can be traced around the old enceinte. The construction is generally coarse rubble with irregular bonding, though occasional facing stones appear where the wall surface was dressed. Some entrance base stones at the former main gate are profiled, and the right-hand base stone shows a mason’s mark that records the hand of its builder. Short passages retain plaster on their inner faces.

The kitchen building survives as an identifiable, large service range connected to the domestic plan of the castle. It is explicitly described as spacious enough in its day to roast an entire ox, showing the scale of provisioning for the household. The kitchen’s walls stand in fragmentary form and testify to substantial medieval domestic activity in the castle core.

The castle’s keep was deliberately destroyed in the 17th century; records state that the keep was blown up during the wartime damage of the Thirty Years’ War. Other structural losses are recorded in later centuries: sections of the southern Rhine-facing walls fell in 1729, forewalls slipped into the river by 1779, and by that year the main roof had gone and parts of the building had collapsed. These losses left the site a ruin by the turn of the 19th century, when it was deemed unfit for habitation.

Archaeological work tied to the late 20th-century rebuilding of the economy yard revealed earlier phases beneath the later barn. During the 1989–1997 conversion project chapel walls and deep foundation courses were exposed and dated to about the year 1000, an earlier phase interpreted as a farm complex predating the 12th-century castle. Conservation work on the visible ruins was carried out in 1891 and 1901, with a major consolidation of the remaining wall fragments completed in 1989, leaving the present assemblage of towers, curtain wall, kitchen range, foundation walls and the economy-yard gate as the recorded remains.