Turmhügel Katzbach

The Turmhügel Katzbach is a vanished medieval hilltop fortification standing eleven metres above the Katzbach stream at 504 metres above sea level. It lies on the western edge of Katzbach, a district of Waldmünchen in the Upper Palatinate region of Bavaria. The site is registered as a scheduled monument under the number D-3-6642-0007. Excavations show it was built in the first quarter of the 12th century by the Lords of Katzbach, ministerial knights of the Cham margraves.

The castle passed to the Lords of Geigant in the 14th and 15th centuries. In 1417 Hilprant II of Geigant left his seat ‘den Sitz zu Kaczpach’ to his sister and her children, after which the stronghold was abandoned. It may have been destroyed during the Hussite Wars. The surviving remains include a clearly visible motte and the remnants of a stone keep on a rocky outcrop.

Today the site is protected as an archaeological monument. Visitors can walk the faint traces of the former trapezoidal enclosure, about twenty-five by thirty metres across. The southern sides drop steeply to the stream while the northern sides were once defended by a ditch filled in around 1905. The quiet surroundings offer a glimpse of how the Upper Palatinate’s early medieval landscape once looked.