Burgruine Haltenberg, Castle ruin and observation tower in Scheuring, Germany

Burgruine Haltenberg is the ruin of a hilltop castle on the steep bank of the Lech between Scheuring and Kaufering. The rectangular main castle is protected by a double ditch system to the north and east, and its plateau is enclosed by the outer walls of the former palace, with a brick upper storey above a Nagelfluh base. In the southeast corner stands the round Romanesque keep, 9 metres in diameter and about 18 metres high, built of large Nagelfluh blocks.

Konrad von Haltenberg appears in a document of 1260 as a ministerialis of Konradin, the last Staufer; later members of the family also served the dukes of Bavaria. In the early 15th century a duke acquired half the castle and sold it in 1425 to the Augsburg patrician Peter Rehlinger, whose family soon held the whole castle until the early 17th century. In 1612 the future Elector Maximilian I bought it and had it rebuilt as a hunting lodge; after the great court hunts ended in the 18th century the lodge was largely demolished. The district of Landsberg am Lech bought the main castle in 1982 and began restoring it.

The castle chapel, dedicated to Saint Erasmus, stood between the main and outer baileys and was still largely intact after the Second World War. Around 1960 a Nagelfluh block fell from the keep and smashed its roof; the vault later collapsed. The ruins are now protected by a temporary roof, and fragments of the Wessobrunn stucco were recovered from the debris.

The ruin is freely accessible; the tower can be climbed only after prior registration in Landsberg am Lech. The main castle is entered from the north via a raised dam that gives a view into the double ditch system. The former economic courtyard in the outer bailey is privately owned and run as a farm.

The original fortification was protected on three sides by a double moat system that separated it from the steep Lech riverbank. The traces of these two ditches can still be made out in the ground around the tower today.