Stahlberg Castle

Stahlberg Castle is the ruin of a spur castle in a side valley on a mountain spur above the district of Steeg in the town of Bacharach in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate.

Since 2002, Stahlberg Castle has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Upper Middle Rhine Valley.

Dendrochronological investigations from 2005 yielded data in the period from 1158 to 1168 for the construction of the entire complex. Previous assumptions about a different age of the upper and lower castle can thus be considered refuted. A second major expansion phase dates to the second quarter of the 14th century. This had become necessary primarily due to collapses of the rectangular keep and the southwestern curtain wall. The round keep was raised at that time. Further minor expansions are documented around 1470.

The castle was probably built on behalf of the Archbishops of Cologne to secure their land holdings that existed here at the time. Already in 1243, the castle, together with Fürstenberg, went as a fief to the Wittelsbach Palatine Counts. Apart from a longer period of pledging between 1317 and 1353 to the Archbishops of Trier, it remained with them and was administered for a long time by the Burgraves Knebel von Katzenelnbogen. Damaged in the Thirty Years' War in 1631 by Swedish troops, it was - like almost all castles in the region - finally destroyed in 1689 by the French armies in the War of the Palatine Succession.