According to local tradition, the hilltop castle was founded in 960 by Count Palatine Hermann I. However, the first certain mention of the Imperial Castle Klotten dates back to 1294. At that time, the castle came into the possession of the Archbishop of Trier. The transfer to the Electorate of Trier was confirmed in 1346. A knightly family of the same name can be proven earlier. From 1410 to 1542, the Lords of Winneburg held the castle as a fief. After that, it was divided; in 1545, Heinrich von Hagen was enfeoffed with part of the castle, while the heirs of the Winneburgers, the Haust von Ulmen, the Höin von Hartenfels and Hugo and Gerlach Zandt von Merl also held shares in the castle. From 1654, Johann Eberhard von Kesselstatt held Klotten Castle as a fief of the Electorate of Trier and was then owned by the Imperial Barons of Kesselstatt until 1917.
The castle was inhabited until 1830 and became a ruin at an unspecified point in time.
In 1917, Hans Harney (1877–1954), a former consul and former director of the Deutsche Bank in Düsseldorf, acquired the castle from the Counts of Kesselstatt and had two houses built there. In 1952, his daughter Else Harney and her partner Wendelin Stahl set up a pottery workshop there. After her death in 1984, Wendelin Stahl ran the workshop there together with his former student Ayca Riedinger until his death in 2000.