Château de Lutzelbourg, Medieval fortress in Zorn Valley, France

Château de Lutzelbourg is a medieval castle ruin located on a rocky hilltop in the Zorn Valley, visible from great distances across the landscape. The site features a square tower as its main structure, with thick stone walls that show the solid construction methods of the period.

Pierre de Lutzelbourg, son of Count Frédéric de Montbéliard, settled on lands between Philippsbourg and the Zorn valley after the Magraviate of Susa passed to him in December 1091 and was also claimed by Emperor Henry IV. Around 1100 he exchanged the priory of Saint-Quirin for the castel de Lutzelbourg with Marmoutier Abbey in Alsace. His only son Réginald died shortly after Christmas 1142, and around 1150 sovereignty passed to Pierre's cousin Étienne, Bishop of Metz.

The fortress takes its name from the noble family that built and defended it during the Middle Ages. Visitors can still see how the structure reflected the power and control of its lords over the surrounding valley.

The ruins stand on the Jungrain plateau above Ottrott, in the Bas-Rhin, not at Lutzelbourg in the Moselle. Access is on foot from Ottrott; the site is private property and the ruins are reached by walking paths on the Elsberg plateau. The Lutzelbourg is the eastern of the two ruins, barely fifty metres from Rathsamhausen.

In 1840 the notary Adolf Germain of Phalsbourg saved the ruins from demolition, as the owners wanted to sell the stone to companies building the railway line. Later, after several sales, Eugène Koeberlé, a Strasbourg medicine teacher, bought the site and around 1900 consolidated the walls, began excavations and built the neo-Romanesque room. In 1909 he published his findings in Strasbourg as Les Ruines du château de Lutzelbourg.