It was the home of St. Elisabeth of Hungary, the place where Martin Luther translated the New Testament of the Bible into German, the site of the Wartburg festival of 1817 and the supposed setting for the possibly legendary Sängerkrieg.

In 1999, Wartburg Castle was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List because of its quintessential medieval architecture and its historical and religious significance.

The hill is an extension of Thuringian Forest, overlooking Mariental to the south-east and the valley of the Hörsel to the north, through which passed the historical Via Regia.

Together with its larger sister castle Neuenburg in the present-day town of Freyburg, the Wartburg secured the extreme borders of his traditional territories.

The castle was first mentioned in a written document in 1080 by Bruno, Bishop of Merseburg, in his De Bello Saxonico ("The Saxon War") as Wartberg.

The count remained a fierce opponent of the Salian rulers, and upon the extinction of the line, his son Louis I was elevated to the rank of a Landgrave in Thuringia by the new German king Lothair of Supplinburg in 1131.

At the age of four, St. Elisabeth of Hungary was sent by her mother to the Wartburg to be raised to become consort of Landgrave Ludwig IV of Thuringia.

From May 1521 to March 1522, Martin Luther stayed at the castle under the name of Junker Jörg (the Knight George), after he had been taken there for his safety at the request of Frederick the Wise following his excommunication by Pope Leo X and his refusal to recant at the Diet of Worms.

From 1540 until his death in 1548, Fritz Erbe [de], an Anabaptist farmer from Herda, was held captive in the dungeon of the south tower, because he refused to abjure anabaptism.

Over the next centuries, the castle fell increasingly into disuse and disrepair, especially after the end of the Thirty Years' War when it had served as a refuge for the ruling family.

[6] Speakers at the event included Heinrich Hermann Riemann, a veteran of the Lützow Free Corps, the philosophy student Ludwig Rödiger, and Hans Ferdinand Massmann.

This event and a similar gathering at Wartburg during the Revolutions of 1848 are considered seminal moments in the movement for German unification.

Two helmets, two swords, a prince's and a boy's armour, however, were found in a temporary store at the time and a few pieces were given back by the USSR in the 1960s.

However, many of the rooms mostly reflect the tastes of the 19th and 20th centuries and the image of the Middle Ages prevalent at the time: the Elisabeth-Kemenate was fitted with mosaics showing the life of St. Elisabeth (created in 1902–06) on behalf of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Sängersaal (with frescoes of the Sängerkrieg by Moritz von Schwind) and the Festssaal on the top floor.

[4]: 150 The Neue Kemenate (New Bower, 1853–1860) today exhibits the art treasures of the Wartburgsammlung, including paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder and sculptures from the workshop of Tilman Riemenschneider.

[4]: 150 In 1999, UNESCO added Wartburg Castle to the World Heritage List as an "Outstanding Monument of the Feudal Period in Central Europe", citing its "Cultural Values of Universal Significance".

[12] For a while, the status of Wartburg as a World Heritage site was endangered by plans to build very tall wind turbines on Milmesberg near Marksuhl.

However, in November 2013, the investor agreed not to build the turbines and a regional planning update has banned such structures within sight of Wartburg in the future.

For centuries, the Wartburg has been a place of pilgrimage for many people from within and outside Germany, for its significance in German history and in the development of Christianity.