Waldnerturm (Vierritterturm)

The tower served with an originally grown kitchen as a venue and resting place for noble hunting companies and was later used until 1933 as a weekend home of a youth organization from Mannheim. Today, the listed Waldner Tower is freely accessible as a lookout tower and is cared for by the town of Hemsbach and the Odenwaldklub, Ortsgruppe Hemsbach e.V.

The Vierritterturm is located in the Schafhof nature reserve, which extends in a characteristic side valley of the Bergstrasse Odenwald between Hemsbach and Balzenbach.

In 1837, Count Waldner-Freundstein bought the Schafhof and had the Four Knights' Tower, with reliefs of four knights with severed heads attached to the upper corners, built in the style of a medieval watchtower. The tower with its attached kitchen, which is no longer preserved, originally served as a resting place for hunting parties.

From the Vierritterturm (or Waldnerturm) there is a beautiful view of the Upper Rhine lowlands as far as the Palatinate Forest in the west and the Tromm ridge in the east. The Schafhof nature reserve at the foot of the Vierritterturm, which is worth seeing, offers, with its wet meadows, seepage and swamp springs as well as oak-hornbeam forests, varied habitats in which rare animal and plant species such as the Bechstein bat or the Spanish flag butterfly are at home.

The Vierritterturm is located in the middle of a dense network of hiking trails on Bergstrasse, which also includes the nationally known Burgensteig.
(odenwald-wandern.de/gehenswuerdigkeiten outlookstuerme/vierritterturm-waldnerturm.php)

Great view and tables and benches for a break.