monument historique
Which site was the heritage designation of Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg from 1862 to Sep 1991?
Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg The Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg ( ; ) is a medieval castle located in the commune of Orschwiller in the Bas-Rhin département of Alsace , France , Located in the Vosges mountains just west of Sélestat , situated in a strategic area on a rocky spur overlooking the Upper Rhine Plain , it was used by successive powers from the Middle Ages until the Thirty Years War when it was abandoned . From 1900 to 1908 it was rebuilt at the behest of the German kaiser Wilhelm II . Today it is a major tourist site , attracting more than 500,000 visitors a year . History . The Buntsandstein cliff was first mentioned as Stofenberk ( Staufenberg ) in a 774 deed issued by the Frankish king Charlemagne . Again certified in 854 , it was then a possession of the French Basilica of St Denis and the site of a monastery . Middle Ages . It is not known when the first castle was built . However , a Burg Staufen ( Castrum Estufin ) is documented in 1147 , when the monks complained to King Louis VII of France about its unlawful construction by the Hohenstaufen Duke Frederick II of Swabia . Fredericks younger brother Conrad III had been elected King of the Romans in 1138 , to be succeeded by Fredericks son Frederick Barbarossa in 1152 , and by 1192 the castle was called Kinzburg ( Königsburg , Kings Castle ) . In the early thirteenth century , the fortification passed from the Hohenstaufen family to the dukes of Lorraine , who entrusted it to the local Rathsamhausen knightly family and the Lords of Hohenstein , who held the castle until the fifteenth century . As the Hohensteins allowed some robber barons to use the castle as a hideout , and their behaviour began to exasperate the neighbouring rulers , in 1454 it was occupied by Elector Palatine Frederick I and in 1462 was set ablaze by the unified forces of the cities of Colmar , Strasbourg , and Basel . In 1479 , the Habsburg emperor Frederick III granted the castle ruins in fief to the Counts of Thierstein , who rebuilt them with a defensive system suited to the new artillery of the time . When in 1517 the last Thierstein died , the castle became a reverted fief and again came into the possession of the Habsburg emperor of the day , Maximilian I . In 1633 , during the Thirty Years War in which Catholics forces fought Protestants , the Imperial castle was besieged by Protestant Swedish forces . After a 52-day siege , the castle was burned and looted by the Swedish troops . For several hundred years it was left unused , and the ruins became overgrown by the forest . Various romantic poets and artists were inspired by the castle during this time . 19th century renovation . The ruins had been listed as a monument historique of the Second French Empire since 1862 and were purchased by the township of Sélestat ( or Schlettstadt ) three years later . After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 the region was incorporated into the German Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine , and in 1899 the citizens granted what was left of the castle to the German emperor Wilhelm II . Wilhelm wished to create a castle lauding the qualities of Alsace in the Middle Ages and more generally of German civilization stretching from Hohkönigsburg in the west to ( likewise restored ) Marienburg Castle in the east . He also hoped the restoration would reinforce the bond of Alsatians with Germany , as they had only recently been incorporated into the newly established German Empire . The management of the restoration of the fortifications was entrusted to the architect Bodo Ebhardt , a proven expert on the reconstruction of medieval castles . Work proceeded from 1900 to 1908 . On May 13 , 1908 , the restored Hohkönigsburg was inaugurated in the presence of the Emperor . In an elaborate re-enactment ceremony , a historic cortege entered the castle , under a torrential downpour . Ebharts aim was to rebuild it , as near as possible , as it was on the eve of the Thirty Years War . He relied heavily on historical accounts but , occasionally lacking information , he had to improvise some parts of the stronghold . For example , the Keep tower is now reckoned to be about 14 metres too tall . Wilhelm II , who regularly visited the construction site via a specially built train station in nearby Saint-Hippolyte , also encouraged certain modifications that emphasised a Romantic nostalgia for Germanic civilization . For example , the main dining hall has a higher roof than it did at the time , and links between the Hohenzollern family and the Habsburg rulers of the Holy Roman Empire are emphasized . The Emperor wanted to legitimise the House of Hohenzollern at the head of the Second Empire , and to assure himself as worthy heir of the Hohenstaufens and the Habsburgs . The castle today . After World War I , the French state confiscated the castle in accordance with the 1919 Treaty of Versailles . It has been listed since 1862 and classified since 1993 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture . In 2007 , ownership was transferred to the Bas-Rhin département . Today , it is one of the most famous tourist attractions in the region . For many years it was considered fashionable in France to sneer at the castle because of its links to the German emperor . Many considered it to be nothing more than a fairy tale castle similar to Neuschwanstein . However , in recent years many historians have established that , although it is not a completely accurate reconstruction , it is at least interesting for what it shows about Wilhelm IIs romantic nationalist ideas of the past and the architects work . Indeed , Bodo Ebhardt restored the castle following a close study of the remaining walls , archives and other fortified castles built at the same period . Parts of the 1937 film La Grande Illusion by Jean Renoir were shot at Haut-Kœnigsbourg . Château de lŒdenbourg Located just below Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg is the ruin of Château de lŒdenbourg , which is also known as Petit-Kœnigsbourg and is a historical monument in its own right . Construction of Château de lŒdenbourg was started somewhere in the middle of the thirteenth century . Copy in Malaysia . A copy of the castle has been built in the Berjaya Hills , 60 km north-east of Kuala Lumpur . A copy of the historic Alsatian city of Colmar is located next to it .