A Snowy Visit to Lichtenberg Chateau

My wife and I decided to visit nearby Lichtenberg Chateau on the second day of the new year.  The castle is just a few kilometers away so it was going to be a short ride through the snow filled forest to get there.  We were almost there when I realized that I had forgotten my camera so we turned around and headed back to the house.  It was a fortuitous memory lapse, because we just caught my wife's parents as they were getting back into their car to leave.  They had decided to stop by to say hello to us on their way home from their New Year’s weekend in Germany.  We were not home so they were getting ready to continue on their way as we pulled up to the house. 

They brought a box full of incredible pastries, a thoughtful gesture and always well received here at the Whiteman abode.  After eating some of the pastries and visiting for a while, they decided to return home and we headed to the castle, this time with my camera in hand.  The main road leading to the castle provides an excellent view of the high ground on which the castle had been built and the village that has since grown up below it.  The castle is sitting on the crest of the tallest hill around.  A superior defensive position and great place for the nobleman to sit in their castle tower and watch their serfs work their fields and shepherd their cattle.  (Here is an incredible aerial photo of Lichtenberg Chateau, although the picture was taken in the summer you can still get the sense of the positioning of the castle.)

We had snow in our town of Ingwiller but there was a lot more snow at the castle and the temperature was colder.  The limbs of the trees are still covered and the roads in the village were solid ice.  We climbed up the trail leading to the castle, crunching our way through the powdery snow.  I was thinking to myself as we climbed the winding, steep road that it would be an incredible sledding hill.   We climbed up to the level of the castle and the first thing you see is the massive exterior castle walls that are at least 45 feet tall surrounded by a 20 foot wide moat.  It looks like a secure place to reside.  The castle residents probably ran out of food and water before an attacking clan breached the tall walls.

The castle was built in the 13^th century by a wealthy family named the Lichtenbergs.  The castle, like most of these medieval castles, are often destroyed and rebuilt during the course of their history.  The Lichtenberg Castle was no exception.  It passed through a number of hands over the centuries being used by Louis 14^th as a defensive post and even survived some shelling during WWII.  One of the interesting structures of the castle ruins, so we’re told, is a gothic style chapel built inside the walls in the 16^th century.  Unfortunately, the interior of the castle is closed from November through March so we were not able to enter inside to check out the ruins.  We’ll wait until the snow thaws before going back.