Grüneck Castle

Grüneck Castle, also known as Gerneck, is a ruined tower castle on the eponymous 704 m above sea level mountain south-southeast of the Lipburg district of the municipality of Badenweiler in the Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald district in Baden-Württemberg.

No historical data is known about this castle complex; it may be the Gerneck Castle mentioned in 1272.

The construction of the hilltop castle could have taken place as early as the 10th or 11th century, at that time as a timber-earth structure. Later it was rebuilt in stone, according to the masonry style of the residential tower during the 13th century. It may have been owned by the noble free lords of Kaltenbach, who had their ancestral seat in the village of the same name southeast of Grüneck Castle. They also resided at Bürgeln Castle, later a monastery and then expanded into a palace, possibly also on a predecessor building of Sausenburg Castle, and possibly at Stockburg Castle.

If this was indeed Gerneck Castle, it was destroyed in 1272 during the war between Rudolf I and the Bishop of Basel, Heinrich von Neuenburg.

Of the former castle complex, only the remains of a square residential tower measuring 14 by 16 meters, and with a wall thickness of two to three meters, have been preserved.