Hohenstaufen Castle

Feel the path change under your boots. The soft forest floor gives way to grass, then to loose stone, and the wind arrives from every side at once. This is the summit of the Hohenstaufen, a steep, rounded mountain above the town of Göppingen. Up here the air smells of cut meadow and cool earth. On a clear day the whole of the Swabian countryside spreads out below you like a map.

Take a moment to look at the shape of the hill itself. It rises almost alone from the farmland, a near-perfect cone. Geologists call it an outlier of the Swabian Jura. That is the long limestone escarpment you can see along the horizon to the south and east. Erosion wore away the land around this peak and left it standing on its own. That isolation made it a natural place for a fortress.

Now look down at your feet. There is very little castle left here. You will find low fragments of wall, traces of foundations, and stones half sunk into the turf. Many first-time visitors feel a small surprise at this. They climb expecting towers and battlements, and they find open sky. But the emptiness is part of the story, and we will come back to it.

The castle that once stood here was built in the late eleventh century. Its builder was a nobleman named Frederick, who became Duke of Swabia. Swabia was one of the great duchies of the medieval German lands, covering much of what is now southwestern Germany. Frederick chose this summit for his new seat. The family took its name from the mountain — and the name of the mountain became the name of a dynasty.

Historians call that family the Staufer, or the Hohenstaufen. Over the next two centuries they rose from regional dukes to kings and emperors. In 1138 a member of the family, Conrad the Third, was elected German king. After him came his nephew, Frederick the First. Most people know him by his Italian nickname — Barbarossa, which means "red beard". He ruled as Holy Roman Emperor for decades in the twelfth century.

The Holy Roman Empire was a large and loose union of territories in central Europe. Its emperor claimed authority over lands stretching from the North Sea into northern Italy. So a single family from this modest Swabian hill came to stand near the top of medieval European politics. Barbarossa crossed the Alps many times. He fought in Italy, quarrelled with popes, and finally died on crusade, drowning in a river in what is now Turkey.

His grandson, Frederick the Second, pushed the family's reach even further. He grew up in Sicily and ruled from the south, far from this mountain. Contemporaries were amazed by his learning and his court, where scholars of different faiths worked side by side. But the Staufer power did not last. Within a generation after his death in the mid thirteenth century, the dynasty had collapsed. Its last heir was executed in Naples as a young man.

So what happened to the castle? It survived the fall of the family that built it, passing through other hands. The decisive blow came in 1525, during the German Peasants' War. That was a wide uprising of farmers and townspeople against their lords. A band of rebels took the castle and set it on fire. After that, it was never rebuilt.

Here is the second surprise. The castle did not only fall — it was carried away. In the years that followed, people from the surrounding area took the cut stone as building material. Pieces of the Staufer fortress ended up in houses and other buildings in the valley below. In a quiet way, the castle still exists. It is simply scattered across the landscape you are looking at now.

Turn your eyes toward the neighbouring summits. Locals speak of the "three emperor mountains": the Hohenstaufen, where you stand, the Rechberg, and the Stuifen. Together they form a familiar outline on the skyline of this region. The Rechberg also carries castle ruins and a pilgrimage church. From here you can trace how the high ground was used again and again to watch over the valleys.

On your way down, stop in the village of Hohenstaufen on the slopes below. Its small church carries the emperor's nickname — the Barbarossa Church. Inside you will find a painting of the red-bearded ruler. On the outside wall there is a Latin inscription. It records the tradition that the emperor passed this way. Whether he worshipped in that exact spot is not certain, but the village has long held on to the memory.

Barbarossa also lives on in legend. According to a popular German tale, he never truly died. He sleeps inside a mountain, waiting to return when his people need him, while his beard grows through a stone table. That story is usually told about the Kyffhäuser hills in central Germany, not this summit. But it shows how deeply this family entered the German imagination — and it all began on the hill beneath you.

Before you leave, stand still for a minute at the highest point. Listen to the wind moving over the grass and the distant sound of the valley — a tractor, a church bell, a passing car. Look at the scattered stones once more. Nine centuries ago, this was the home of a family that would rule an empire. Today it is open sky, quiet ground, and a very long view. Take that view with you as you walk back down.