page_title: Neudahn Castle
section_title: Site
hierarchical_section_title: Neudahn Castle / Site
caption_attribution_description: English: Ruin of castle neudahn (near Dahn, palatinate forest) Deutsch: Ruine Neudahn bei Dahn im Pfälzerwald - Inneres Burgtor mit Treppenturm
context_page_description: The rock castle of Neudahn, in the southwestern Palatine Forest in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, is located at the northern end of an elongated ridge near the town of Dahn. The heart of the castle is situated on one of the sandstone rock outcrops that are typical of the Dahner Felsenland region.
context_section_description: Left of the place where the original gates were located, in the southeast, are the remains of a tower, 7 metres in diameter. From this tower, parts of a thick defensive wall runs westwards, before bending north. On the steep northern and northeastern side of the hillside the wall has entirely disappeared. It led to the  flanking tower at the northern end of the site.
  Of the oldest – late Hohenstaufen – castle on the vertically hewn, central rock outcrop, which is just under 20 metres high, the only surviving features are a cistern at the western end and the southern wall of the small palas with its window and door openings. At the northwestern end of the main rock outcrop in the south was a late medieval domestic building and, west of that, a well. A formerly plastered newel tower from the same period on the northwestern edge of the rock outcrop leads up to the upper ward. The actual entrance into the ground floor is, as on many castles, probably not authentic and may have been made for modern visitors, which the date 1975 over the entrance suggests. It also lies outside the inner gate. The historic entrance is inside the gate to the left and at a higher level.
  The dominant image of the castle is the two four-storey, roughly 24 metre-high, battery towers on the opposite side. They date to the first half of the 16th century. The west tower measures about 7 metres in height, the east tower, about 10 metres. The thickness of the walls is about 3 metres. Two embrasures (so-called Maulscharten) on the southern battery tower have been ornately carved into the shape of lions'  faces.
  On the continuation of the hill to the east-southeast the site was protected by a wedge-shaped bastion that was also a recognition feature of Neudahn. Its shape was intended to prevent shells from striking the castle frontally. It protected the upper ward on the more gentle slope of the hill on that side. The bastion and the weapon towers show that, in the late Middle Ages, considerable modifications to the castle were carried out and the lords of the castle took account of the introduction of firearms and cannon.
caption: Inner gate and newel tower
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