The Heidelberg Castle is one of the most famous ruins in Germany and the landmark of the city of Heidelberg. Until its destruction in the Palatinate War of Succession, it was the residence of the elector of the Palatinate. Since the destruction by the soldiers of Louis XIV in 1689 and 1693, the Heidelberg Castle was only partially restored.
The castle ruin of red Neckar valley sandstone rises 80 meters above the valley floor on the northern slope of the Königstuhl and dominates from there the image of the old town. The Ottheinrichsbau, one of the palaces of the palace, is one of the most important German buildings of the Renaissance. Around the year 1182 Konrad the Staufer, half brother of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and since 1156 Count Palatine near the Rhine, moved his court from the castle Stahleck at Bacharach on the Middle Rhine to the castle Heidelberg.
The city of Heidelberg is named in 1196 for the first time in a document. A castle in Heidelberg ("castrum in Heidelberg cum burgo ipsius castri") is mentioned in 1225, when Ludwig I received this castle from the bishop Heinrich of Worms as a fief. In 1214, the dukes of Bavaria from the house Wittelsbach had been entrusted with the Palatine county. A castle is last mentioned in 1294. In a document of the year 1303, two castles are listed for the first time: the upper castle on the Kleine Gaisberg at the current Molkenkur and the lower castle on the Jettenbühl. For a long time research had therefore established that the founding of the lower castle had to be between 1294 and 1303, especially since the construction office meticulously carried out by the palace office in the second half of the 19th century came to the conclusion that the building was not a date of the castle before the 15th century.
Due to architectural findings and recent archaeological research, however, in the recent research on the Heidelberg Castle, the origin of the lower castle is now dated to the first half of the 13th century.