Burg Wartenberg, castle site in Wartenberg, Germany

Burg Wartenberg is a vanished hill castle on a spur at 465 m above sea level on the Nikolaiberg, east above Wartenberg in the Erding district. The rectangular site measured about 100 by 70 metres, with a main castle, a neck ditch still visible in the northeast, an outer bailey and a separate mound to the south holding a hunting lodge. No masonry survives above ground; only artificially steepened slopes mark the defences, and St. Nicholas Chapel stands in the northwest corner.

A rampart on the Nikolaiberg existed in the 10th and 11th centuries, likely part of the Hungarian fortifications. Between 1116 and 1120 Otto V of Scheyern-Wittelsbach built a castle at the site, which from 1180 became the centre of the Wittelsbach duchy of Bavaria. After a fire at the end of the 12th century, the ducal seat moved to Kelheim and later Landshut. In 1373 the castle passed to the market town of Wartenberg and was demolished in the 15th century, leaving only the chapel.

The chapel of St. Nicholas in the northwest corner of the former castle was built around 1250 on the site of an earlier castle chapel. Above its south entrance door is a Romanesque tympanum showing a dragon and a lion beside a tree. The chapel was given a Baroque interior in 1619.

The site lies on the Nikolaiberg at 465 m, east above Wartenberg, beside the St. Nikolaus chapel. No walls remain above ground; only artificially steepened slopes and the neck ditch in the northeast still show the former fortification. The chapel, with its Romanesque tympanum, stands in the northwest corner of the former castle area.

The castle site was long taken for an early medieval Hungarian refuge wall, and excavations by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection in 1978/1979 confirmed a 10th-century origin. Nothing stands above ground today; only artificially steepened slopes show where the ramparts ran. A classicist limestone stele on a three-step base, set up in 1855, marks the spot beside St. Nicholas' Chapel.