Château de Saint-Ulrich, castle ruins in Ribeauvillé, Haut-Rhin, France

Château de Saint-Ulrich is a ruined castle of reddish-brown stone on a wooded ridge above Ribeauvillé. On the right stands a tall square keep with a flat top and small openings; to its left, lower walls connect ruined sections. A long wall with a row of small arched windows and square holes below runs across the left front, and open doorways and an internal courtyard remain among the fragmented masonry.

The fortress was founded by the Ribeaupierre family and served as their main seat of power from the 11th to 16th centuries. It endured multiple attacks and sieges before eventually being abandoned and left to decay.

The name Saint-Ulrich comes from the chapel dedicated to Ulrich, bishop of Augsburg, built around 1435; medieval texts instead called the castle after the Ribeaupierre (Rappolstein) family. The knights' hall still shows nine Romanesque windows added in the 13th century. A local legend tells of two Ribeaupierre brothers who agreed to wake each other by firing an arrow at the other's shutters; the brother at Saint-Ulrich shot first, and the other opened his shutters at that moment and was killed.

The ruins stand at 528 m on a ridge above Ribeauvillé, reached on foot by marked trails climbing through woodland from the town; the climb is steep in places and takes about 45 minutes to an hour. The masonry is unprotected and crumbling in parts, with broken wall tops and open doorways, so watch your footing near the edges.

The keep still bears traces of an old cell where a noble woman was imprisoned long ago. According to local accounts, a guard secretly helped her escape from her confinement.