Moritzburg (Halle)
In 968, when the Archbishopric of Magdeburg was established by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, he granted the archbishop his Giebichenstein Castle near Halle.
Already in the 13th century, powerful aristocrats could buy privileges, reduce the influence of the sovereign, the Archbishop of Magdeburg, on the town.
In the 15th century a group of the important guilds formed an opposition and demanded representation in the city council, which was until then dominated by the urban aristocrats.
As a consequence, the town lost its earlier gained freedoms and it was determined ein festes Schloss zu erbauen, um die Stadt besser in Gehorsam, Unterwürfigkeit und Ruhe zu erhalten: to build a castle in order to gain better control over the town and keep it obedient and quiet.
Starting from 1533, Andreas Günther, general master builder of the dioceses of Mainz and Magdeburg then created the fortress walls and probably also the round bastions on the east side.
In 1517, he called the notorious Dominican friar Johann Tetzel to the Moritzburg and started a limitless sale of indulgences, financing the archbishop's large collection of relics.
The collection, which was first housed in the castle's chapel and later moved to the city's cathedral, composed of 353 reliquaries with as much as 21,484 single relics, among these 42 whole bodies of saints, rendering it ideally and materially extremely valuable; it was the most outstanding of its kind in Germany.
On June 10, 1547 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V moved into Halle upon his victory in the Battle of Mühlberg; his military leader, the Duke of Alba, occupied the Moritzburg.
In September 1631 the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus appeared before Halle and could peacefully occupy it for a longer period.
On March 19, 1639 Saxon troops blasted the south-western bastion, in turn forcing the - now Swedish - inhabitants to give up, which happened three days later.
There existed plans for a reconstruction of the complex for the University of Halle by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, but the project was cancelled due to lack of funding.
Funded by donations, the Talamt, the southern battlements, the Gate Tower and the South Bastion were reconstructed to house the museum.
In World War II the deep vaults of the complex served as an air-raid shelter for the Halle citizens and the Gauleitung (Gau administration) of the NSDAP.
The architects of the reconstruction, in which the ruined western part of the castle received a modern roof and interior, were Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano.
The staircase in the middle of the courtyard wall is quite noticeable for being one of the first stairways in Germany which is constructed into the building structure and not just applied on the outside.
The original main entrance, which can still be recognized by its coat-of-arms frieze, lay in the northern wall but was abandoned in 1616 and consequently blocked up.
The entrance tower facing the town stands above the eastern wall and housed living rooms and, on the lowest floor, a chapel.
The east wing originally consisted of narrow two-floor battlements, the lower floor had open arcades and loop-holes.
In 1777 the Baroque, so called Lazarettbau (military hospital) was erected above the eastern foundation walls for the Prussian garrison.
A memorial plate of the consecration in 1514 is found on the northern wall and shows the coat of arms of Cardinal Albrecht V of Brandenburg along with Saint Maurice and Mary Magdalene.
