Burgruine Velburg, Velburg

The ruins of Velburg Castle, also known as Velberg, are the ruins of a high medieval to early modern hilltop castle that once rose on the rocky hilltop of Schlossberg at an altitude of 621.8 meters above the valley of the Frauenbach. The ruin is located immediately east of the town of Velburg in the municipality of the same name in the district of Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz in Bavaria, Germany.

The castle probably originated around 1100 on the edge of a zone of imperial property on the Black Laaber, which after 1009 came into the hands of the bailiffs of the Bamberg bishopric. The first lord of the castle was the nobleman Kuno, who made a donation to the Regensburg monastery Obermünster around 1110/17 during the reign of the abbess Hadamut. The far-reaching theories about the descent of the Counts of Velburg from the Counts of Sulzbach appearing from 1156 on have recently been presented in detail by B. Schneider. Hermann married the Austrian noblewoman Adelheid von Klamm and directed the activities of his family there, while they are hardly provable in the Upper Palatinate. The family died out in 1217 with Count Ulrich and the inheritance fell to the Duke of Bavaria. The castle became an official seat and in 1505 came to the newly founded principality of Palatinate-Neuburg, but was soon abandoned and fell into disrepair. Today it serves as a lookout point thanks to the 12-meter-high keep that has been made accessible.

The ruin is best reached from Velburg on the König-Otto-Schlaufe hiking trail on the Jurasteig. An old lime tree avenue leads up the castle hill through the rocky Jura landscape with dry grassland and beech forests.