Roman Castle Zwing

A stone fort with a maximum size of 20 × 20 m was identified, which may have had a single gate, possibly facing the Limes, on the northeast side. The corners of the fort were rounded with a radius of three meters. The wall thickness was 75 cm. No ditches could be found during the investigations of the Imperial Limes Commission; the ditches observed during earlier research were probably created by the removal of the defensive walls.

Today, nothing of the fort is visible except for a Roman relief, of which a copy has been embedded in a modern wall. The original is located in the Badisches Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe. The 78 cm by 61 cm slab is dominated in its center by a 36.5 cm diameter circular area, which presumably originally contained a painted inscription. To the left is the figure of a warrior. Further finds from the small fort, including two smaller relief plates, each depicting a vexillum, are exhibited in the Heimatmuseum Amorbach.

Starting at the small fort Zwing, the Limes leaves its previous north-south course and takes an east-southeast direction in a wide arc extending to Wp 10/35, which it maintains almost linearly until the small fort Seitzenbuche. The course of the Limes leads exclusively through densely wooded areas, which explains the good state of preservation of the Roman relics. From the small fort Zwing, with its approximately 491 meters of altitude, the Limes initially rises again by over 60 meters to Wp 10/34 (553 m above sea level), only to then continuously drop to 462 meters of altitude at the small fort Seitzenbuche.

Limes Wall

Approximately 150 m south of the small fort Zwing are the remains of a rather unusual section of the Odenwald Limes. For a length of 112 m, the Limes was not constructed as a palisade, but as a wall of Bunter sandstone. The reason was probably the difficulty of digging the palisade ditch in rocky ground, while stones were abundant there, at the highest point of the Odenwald Limes. The wall has a width of 0.9 m and was topped with rounded sandstone blocks. On the "Roman" side, the stones are neatly finished, while on the side facing away from the empire, they are only roughly hewn.