Schlossberg (Freiburg)

The tower located on the hill (Schloßbergturm) offers a unique panoramic view over the whole town and its vicinity, and was built in 2002 as a project of the board of trustees.

As far back as 1091, Berthold II, Duke of Zähringen, built the Romanesque-style Castum de Friburch, mentioned in numerous documents and praised in the songs of the medieval poet Hartmann von Aue.

It was not until thirty years later in 1120 that his son Konrad, with the permission of Emperor Heinrich IV, bestowed the right to hold a market upon the settlement of artisans and servants which had grown up at the foot of the hill.

Over the centuries the fortifications on the Schlossberg were repeatedly destroyed by fire and hostilities, but were always re-erected by the rulers of the time because of their strategic importance in controlling the Dreisam River valley.

In 1299 during the struggle with their overlord Count Egino II and his brother-in-law Konrad von Lichtenberg, the Bishop of Strasbourg, the citizens used a catapult to breach castle walls.

And in 1366 in a siege during the conflict with Egino II the citizens in fact used cannons to raze “the most glorious fortress in German territories” to the ground.

The town carried out only minimal repairs on the fortification and thus it became easy prey for enemies during the Peasants' Revolt in 1525 and the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).

[citation needed]During the War of the Spanish Succession, in 1713, the fortress, manned by a strong Austrian force, was once again besieged and taken by French troops under the command of Marshall Claude Louis Hector de Villars.

Before the French troops departed, however, they destroyed Vauban’s system of ramparts so thoroughly that for several decades a vast field of rubble spread over the Schlossberg and the surrounding area of the town.