Lichtenau Fortress, Medieval fortress in Lichtenau, Germany.

Lichtenau Fortress is a rectangular Renaissance fortification of reddish-brown stone built from 1558 onward, arranged around an open courtyard. Its square perimeter wall carries a red-tiled pitched roof forming covered galleries, with round corner towers under dark conical roofs; the taller front and rear towers flank the main entrance. Nine bastions project into the inner moat.

Nuremberg rulers acquired this fortification in 1406 and rebuilt it as a strategic outpost against Brandenburg-Ansbach. It later became a repository for archives and played an important role in Frankish regional history.

The name Lichtenau refers to the market town, not a noble family; the fortress was a Nuremberg outpost from 1406. Since 1806 it served as a prison, and the poet Oskar von Redwitz was born there in 1823. Today the local history society holds a two-day castle festival every July.

The inner courtyard is open to visitors and shows how the medieval fortification was laid out. The archive collections inside have specific visiting hours, so it is worth checking beforehand.

In 1688, the officer John Frederick Haller resisted French troops under Louis XIV rather than surrender. This defensive stand shaped how the fortress is remembered as a place of resistance in Frankish history.