The guys had to go work for a bit this morning, then wanted to go explore a little. This was the last castle/burg in the area that I hadn't explored yet, but really wanted to. So the 3 guys and I all took off and hit the road to Burg Nanstein.
This is the biggest and most well preserved castle in the Landstuhl/Kaiserslautern area. It was built around 1162 after Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I demanded its construction as additional defense for the Palatinate. In 1504, a German knight inherited part of the castle after his father's death in the War of the Bavarian Succession, finally acquiring the entire castle in 1518. He immediately began extensive refortification to make the castle suitable for firearms. Nanstein is well known for an elaborate siege in 1523 which claimed the life of the castle owner. The fall of Nanstein was a symbol for the decline of castles in the Palatinate. There was a lot of history to read about in this castle!!
This castle you actually have to pay to get into. It wasn't technically open yet when we pulled up, but the caretaker saw us walking around and asked us if we wanted to go in early. So we paid our fare and started exploring. We were the only ones there, so that was nice being able to explore on our own. Felt very secluded and private.
There has been a lot of restoration done to this castle, and some artifacts, pictures and stories have been placed throughout the grounds, more so than any other I'd been to. Well, this was the first ruins I went to that actually had information about the castle & its history. It was a beautiful restoration in progress and the buildings had some amazing underground tunnels going through it. It felt very dungeon-ish down there, but don't know that they were actual dungeons.
We spent a while here wandering around, then the guys had to get back to the base for a quick meeting. I packed up our stuff at the hotel, as we were taking off for Frankfurt after we were done here.
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