Schopflen Castle

The Schopflen ruin is the medieval ruin of a moated castle in the municipality of Reichenau in the district of Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg.

The Schopflen castle ruin is located at the eastern end of the Lake Constance island of Reichenau. It lies at the western end and on the southern side of the Poplar Avenue (Pirminstrasse or state road L 221 Konstanz-Reichenau), which today borders the Reichenau causeway at an elevation of 397.4 meters, and thus about 2.5 meters higher than the water level of the Untersee (394.93 meters). It is separated from the island of Reichenau by the ten-meter-wide Bruckgraben, over which a bridge leads to the Reichenau causeway to the mainland. When the Reichenau causeway was built in 1838, the castle came to lie on it.

The first buildings of the moated castle date back to the 11th century. The castle was built by the abbots of Reichenau Abbey to secure the shallows between the island and the mainland at low water. In 1312, the two-story castle building was rebuilt by Abbot Diethelm von Castell and destroyed in 1366 in the so-called "Konstanz Fishermen's War".

Of the two-story building of the former castle complex, the imposing walls, about ten meters high and 2.5 meters thick, have been preserved and serve the NABU nature conservation association as an observation platform.