St Hippolyte - Haut Koenigsbourg

The Haut-Koenigsbourg (755m/2,475ft) is the largest castle in Alsace, with massive walls and towers of red sandstone rearing 500m/1,640ft above the Rhine plain. Originally held (ca. 1147) by the Hohenstaufens, it was destroyed by the cities of the Upper Rhineland in 1462 and rebuilt in 1479 by the Count of Thierstein, who was granted it as a fief by the German Emperor. In 1633, during the Thirty Years War, it was besieged and destroyed by the Swedes. In 1865 the ruin was acquired by the town of Sélestat, which presented it in 1899 to the Emperor Wilhelm II, who had it restored (by Bodo Ebhard, 1901-1908), as near as possible, to its appearance in 1479.