Orsbach Castle

Orsbach Castle is a medieval castle complex in the Orsbach district near Aachen, whose origins probably date back to the Carolingian era.

About five kilometers west of the old city center of Aachen, a high plateau rises north of the old military road from Aachen to the river ports of Maastricht. In the Middle Ages, royal estates were located there, from whose respective owners the scholastics of the Aachen Marienstift received the tithe. A part of these estates was transferred as a hereditary fief to the ministerial family van Orlosberg (Orlousberghe), who are traceable there from the 13th century. For the purpose of monitoring the important economic route from Aachen to Maastricht, which was clearly visible from here and over which a large part of trade and troop convoys passed, a castle-like fortification was built at the beginning of the 15th century next to the farm buildings and a small Romanesque church. The tower of this castle now served as one of the eight reporting and surveillance towers of the Aachen Empire, between which acoustic and optical communication took place within the imperial territory and with the city center itself. In this way, the castle also became part of the Landwehr of the Aachen Landgraben, established near Orsbach in 1453, that border fortification of the Aachen Empire, which was built between 1419 and 1568 according to a contract between the Duchy of Jülich and the Free Imperial City of Aachen and here in Orsbach advanced furthest to the west. The family van Orlosberg, as the Aachen city accounts of 1376 show, experienced a name addition, in that Aurelii or Amelii van O. (readability in the city accounts ambiguous) is referred to as Millis de O. His descendants adopted the designation Millis as a family name. The designation is derived from Amelii (a derivation of "miles" = knight) and from the function of the family = milites (ministerials), here meaning imperial knights. Later, the designation Millis became the family name Milles.

The castle complex continued to serve as a watchtower until the invasion of the French in 1792 and the associated end of the Aachen Empire. Although the French demolished the small chapel in 1803, the castle complex itself was spared by them. Constantly changing owners, multiple structural changes, finally the repurposing into an inn with an attached dance hall, but also several years of vacancy were not conducive to the historical preservation of the castle, and it visibly decayed and was even to be finally demolished. The complex, which was still owned by the city of Aachen at that time, was only fundamentally restored after its sale in 1968 to an architect and returned by him to as original a state as possible. Today it again serves as living space and has in the meantime been placed under protection according to the monument protection law of North Rhine-Westphalia.