Querfurt lies 25km/15mi southwest of Halle in a fertile plain. Its castle, Burg Querfurt, is one of the oldest in Germany and also one of the largest (almost seven times the size of the Wartburg in Eisenach).
The castle in Querfurt is surrounded by a double ring of walls; the inner ring dates from about 1200, the outer ring from about 1350. Outside the outer ring of walls is a moat, hewn from the rock, into which project three massive bastions. In the course of a conducted tour of the castle, visitors are shown an underground passage between the castle and the south bastion.
Address: Burg Querfurt, D-06268 Querfurt, Germany
Hours:
February 1 to November 30: am-am; Closed: Mon, Tue
Facilities: On-site accomodations, Restaurant or food service
In the center of the castle courtyard in Querfurt stands the 12th C. church on a cruciform plan with three apses. In the burial chapel which was added in the 14th C is the tomb of Gebhard XIV of Querfurt (d. 1383).
Round the castle courtyard are three Romanesque towers. One of them, the Pariser Turm, is open to the public as an outlook tower.
Under Dicker Heinrich ("Fat Henry"), one of the castle in Querfurt's three towers, were found remains of a house of the Carolingian period - the oldest secular building in the Saale-Elbe region.
One of the two buildings within the Querfurt castle, the Korn and Rusthaus (granary and arsenal) houses the Castle and District Museum (history of the castle and the town of Querfurt; also periodic special exhibitions).
In the Markt of Querfurt is the Town Hall, a Renaissance building with a Baroque tower (1699).
On Otto-Dietrich-Strasse and the Freimarkt are a number of fine burghers' houses, some of them with beautiful doorways.
The town has preserved some stretches of its old fortifications (an inner and an outer wall). The parish church of St Lambert is Late Gothic, with much subsequent alteration (most recently in the 17th C); it has a richly decorated reredos and pulpit by G. Müller.
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