Balmfluh Castle Ruins

The Balmfluh castle ruins are clearly visible from the trail. It's worth getting off your bike for a moment and taking a look at the old walls.

Super

The castle was built 20 meters above the ground in a natural cave approximately 20 meters wide and 6 meters deep in the Jura Mountains.The 2.4-meter-thick outer wall featured two doorways and narrow windows. A retaining wall provided protection from the wet rock face, while the rest was a simple two-story wooden structure, as shown by the timber holes. The wall openings visible today were distorted during restoration. In a later construction phase, an inhabited fortified house was built on the forecourt, 29 meters long and 3.5 meters wide inside. A massive quadrangular wall, leaning back against the rock face, has been preserved. It was probably a defensive enclosure wall for an agricultural building complex.Access to the inner castle was via an elongated staircase, partly made of brick and partly hewn into the rock, leading up a rock ramp. The connection between the outer and inner castles can only be partially reconstructed. The current rise is of modern origin and only partially corresponds to the original.Excavations from 1939 and 1941 indicate that the site has been used as a settlement since the Azilian period.Source: Wikipedia