Castle Lemberg, Medieval castle ruins in Lemberg, Germany.
Lemberg Castle, also called Burg Lemberg, occupies the Schlossberg hill at 458 metres and preserves wall remains and the foundations of a chapel. The chapel was first mentioned in 1502, but coins and pottery found there date to the second half of the 13th century. The site also holds a shaft cistern and a modern annex built in 2001.
In 1198 the abbot of Hornbach Abbey granted the hills Gutinberc and Ruprehtisberc to Count Henry I of Zweibrücken, who built Lemberg Castle around 1200; it was first recorded as Castrum Lewenberc in 1230. Count James of Zweibrücken-Bitsch remodelled it as a Renaissance schloss between 1535 and 1541. After being plundered in 1634–1635 and razed in 1636 during the Thirty Years' War, it was only makeshift-rebuilt, then slighted by French troops in October 1689.
The castle gave its name to the Amt Lemberg, an administrative district that around 1794 comprised Pirmasens and 24 villages in four sub-districts. The Palatine Forest Club has run a castle café here since 1953, and since 2001 a modern extension has hosted medieval events and a castle information centre for the Palatinate and North Vosges.
The ruin stands on the Schlossberg at 458 metres; the wall remains and chapel foundations lie open on the hilltop. A modern annex built in 2001 houses the castle information centre for the Palatinate and North Vosges, and the Palatine Forest Club runs a castle café there. The exposed hilltop position gives a wide view over Lemberg and the wooded Wasgau hills.
The shaft cistern was not left unfinished: after diggers passed 94.80 metres without reaching groundwater, the shaft was converted into a cistern. An almost horizontal adit, cut with hammers and chisels, ran nearly 200 metres from the hillside and met the shaft at about 60 metres depth; a spring fed it. Excavations in the 1990s made the shaft a key site for the castle's 17th-century destruction.
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