Schwabsburg Castle is the ruins of a hilltop castle at about 120 m above sea level. NN, on a mountain spur, U-shaped surrounded by the Schwabsburg district of the town of Nierstein in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Fast Facts
The Schwabsburg was probably founded around 1210 and found its first documentary mention in 1257 in a royal document from Richard of Cornwall as a base of the Hohenstaufen rulers on the Rhine.
In the 14th century the castle was pledged to the Archbishop of Mainz for 60 years and then became the property of the Palatinate Electors. Knight Wigand von Dienheim († November 26, 1331) was given Schwabsberg Castle as a fief in 1316 because of his high reputation with Emperor Ludwig IV (HRR).
In the Thirty Years' War, the castle, like the entire Lower Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine, was destroyed from 1620 by an army led by the Spanish general and general Ambrosio Spinola or his successor Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba from spring 1621. In 1799 the castle was demolished after it was auctioned off.