Cave castle

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Predjama cave castle near Postojna (Adelsberg), Slovenia
Kropfenstein Castle near Waltensburg / Vuorz, Canton of Graubünden (Switzerland)
Buchfart Castle , Thuringia

A cave castle (also a grotto castle ) is an escape or residential castle built into natural rock caves . It belongs to the type of hilltop castles . In contrast to other types of castles (such as moated castles ), a cave castle is only exposed to an attack from the entrance side. The castle entrance was mostly in the middle of the rock face, which made it very difficult to penetrate. Finds show that caves have been used as places of refuge since the Stone Age . The first medieval cave castles were built in the 11th and 12th centuries. In the 14th and 15th centuries, this type of castle was more widespread, especially in some regions of France and Switzerland .

Location and facilities

The actual cave castles were usually located at the foot of an elongated rock face and at the height of a more or less sloping scree slope. The building type of the cave castle is also rather rare in mountainous regions, for example in North Tyrol only four systems have so far been proven: Altfinstermünz in the uppermost Inntal, Loch near Unter-Pinswang, Lueg am Brenner and a cave castle in the mansion wall near Schwendt / Kössen. In some areas of Switzerland and France, however, the soft rock material offered favorable conditions for the construction of cave and grotto castles. Such castles are much more common in Graubünden , Ticino , Valais or Dordogne than in Bavaria or Tyrol .

The farm buildings and stables were mostly in the valley floor under the castle, as the cave was often only accessible on steep and narrow paths. Archaeological excavations prove the relatively high standard of living on some cave castles, other facilities are likely to have only been inhabited temporarily and served as pass barriers or to monitor important road connections.

For obvious reasons, most of the cave castles do not have a keep or other tower structures. An exception here is Loch Loch near Eichhofen in Bavaria, which is preceded by a stately, round keep.

Often the cave or grotto was simply closed off by a front wall and divided inside by stone or wooden partition walls. However, some castles were later developed and expanded into representative residences, for example Stein Castle and Predjama Castle .

In structural terms, the cave castle is closely related to the rock castle ; here too, natural or artificially enlarged rock openings were often included in the construction. In Central Europe, such rock castles have been preserved in numerous examples in the sandstone areas of southern and central Germany or Bohemia, including in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains , Palatinate Forest and in the Haßberge Mountains . At Buchfart Castle in Thuringia , artificial cavities (not caves) driven into the steep slope of the limestone cliff extend horizontally over a length of about 110 meters.

Cave castles and grotto castles

In scientific usage, a distinction is made between the cave castle and the grotto castle. In the case of a grotto castle, a complete building was erected in front of or in a natural grotto (Predjama Castle), while in the case of the cave castle the cave is only closed by a front wall and divided by wooden or stone walls. In popular scientific language, however, both terms are usually used synonymously.

Further examples

literature

See also

Commons : Castles in caves  - collection of images, videos and audio files