Bloßenstaufen Castle (Ruin)

The castle ruin Bloßenstaufen, also called Alten-Stauffen and Alter Turm, is a castle remnant on a hillside road to Altenberg between the farm Alter Thurm and the district Staufen of the municipality Syrgenstein in the Swabian district of Dillingen an der Donau in Bavaria.

The hilltop castle was built in the 12th century at a strategically important location by the local nobility, the Lords of Bloßenstaufen, who are documented since 1171, as their ancestral seat. In 1387, the castle lords sold their property to the Dukes of Bavaria. In 1420, Hans von Westernach, one of the interim pledge holders, had renovations carried out for 300 guilders, and in 1449, the Bavarian dukes established an administrative office.

In 1462, the castle was burned down by Margrave Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg and finally destroyed in 1504 during the Bavarian War of Succession by imperial troops. In 1536, Melchior Visel, the lord of the manor of Staufen and mayor of Lauingen, acquired the remains of the castle from Duke Ottheinrich of Neuburg and his brother Philipp and built Staufen Castle in Staufen in 1538 with the stones.

In 1794, Baron Marquard von Hornstein bought the castle remnant "Alten-Stauffen", which had been referred to as "a dilapidated old house" since 1560, and erected a dairy farm with a residential house on the site of the former farmyard, which became the present isolated farm. In 1808, the remains of the castle were demolished and the remaining ashlar stones were used for the abutments of the Dillingen Danube bridge.