Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Where is Hohenzollern Castle?
Hohenzollern Castle (German: Burg Hohenzollern) is the ancestral seat of the imperial House of Hohenzollern.[lower-alpha 1] The third of three hilltop castles on the site, it is located atop Mount Hohenzollern, above and south of Hechingen, on the edge of the Swabian Jura of central Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
Hohenzollern Castle is a hilltop castle located on the Berg Hohenzollern, an isolated promontory of the Swabian Jura 855 meters (2,805ft) (NHN) above sea level, 234 meters (768ft) above and to the south of Hechingen, Germany approximately 50 kilometers (31mi) south of Stuttgart, capital of Baden-Württemberg.[3] This mountain lends its name to the local geographic region, der Zollernalbkreis, and is known among locals as Zollerberg (Zoller Mountain), or simply Zoller.
In January 1633, at the height of the Thirty Years' War, the Swedish army approached Haigerloch and Karl fled with an entourage of 21 people to Hohenzollern Castle. The Swedish army soon occupied Hohenzollern Castle. Count Karl was granted a free retreat and he went to the imperial army in Überlingen, where he tried unsuccessfully to talk them into helping him recapture his castle.
Hohenzollern is a mountain, 855 m, of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located in Zollernalbkreis. On its top the famous Hohenzollern Castle is located. The mountain is an outlier, about 1 km north of the Swabian Jura.
The House of Hohenzollern is a German dynasty of former princes, electors, kings and emperors of Hohenzollern, Brandenburg, Prussia, the German Empire, and Romania. The family arose in the area around the town of Hechingen in Swabia during the 11th century and took their name from Hohenzollern Castle. The first ancestors of the Hohenzollerns were mentioned in 1061.
Affected by economic problems and internal feuds, the Hohenzollern counts from the 14th century onwards came under pressure by their neighbors, the Counts of Württemberg and the cities of the Swabian League, whose troops besieged and finally destroyed Hohenzollern Castle in 1423. Nevertheless, the Hohenzollerns retained their estates, backed by their Brandenburg cousins and the Imperial House of Habsburg. In 1535, Count Charles I of Hohenzollern (1512–1576) received the counties of Sigmaringen and Veringen as Imperial fiefs.
Charles II. von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1547–1606), son of Charles I was the count of Sigmaringen from 1576 until 1606. He was also the founder of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen line of the Hohenzollern family. Under Charles II the castle was renovated. Between 1576 and 1606 the gatehouse was expanded to cover the entrance to the castle and a new church was built near the castle.
Karl I of Hohenzollern (1516 in Brussels – 18 March 1576 at Sigmaringen Castle) was Count of County of Hohenzollern from 1525 to 1575. He was Imperial Archchamberlain and chairman of the Aulic Council.
The Hohenzollerns named their estates after Hohenzollern Castle in the Swabian Alps. The Hohenzollern Castle lies on an 855 meters high mountain called Hohenzollern. It still belongs to the family today.
In 2015, parts of the 2016 thriller-horror film A Cure for Wellness were filmed at the castle,[14][15] closing it from 13–24 July 2015.[16] Hohenzollern Castle as well as Peckforton Castle in England were also used in the filming of the 2017 TV adaption of The Worst Witch.[17][18]
With over 350,000 visitors per year Hohenzollern castle is one of the most visited castles in Germany.[11] The castle is privately owned by the House of Hohenzollern,[12] with two-thirds belonging to the Brandenburg-Prussian branch, and the balance to the Swabian branch. Since 1952, the Princess Kira of Prussia Foundation has used the castle for an annual summer camp for children.[13] Whenever Prince George and his family are staying at the castle, the Prussian flag flies over the castle.[12]
Magdalene of Brandenburg (1460 in Tangermünde – 17 June 1496 at Hohenzollern Castle) was a German noblewoman. She was a princess of Brandenburg by birth and by marriage a Duchess of Hohenzollern.
The conflict with Eitel Friedrich I over Hohenzollern Castle escalated when in 1422 Friedrich XII began a feud against the free imperial city of Rottweil. The Swabian League of Cities allied with Eitel Friedrich I and the Counts of Württemberg against Friedrich XII. After they had besieged Hohenzollern castle for ten months, Friedrich XII had to surrender in 1423. Emperor Sigismund ordered the castle to be destroyed as a punishment, and forbade Friedrich to build it up again.
The final castle was built between 1846 and 1867 as a family memorial by Hohenzollern scion King Frederick William IV of Prussia. Architect Friedrich August Stüler based his design on English Gothic Revival architecture and the Châteaux of the Loire Valley.[1] No member of the Hohenzollern family was in permanent or regular residence when it was completed, and none of the three German Emperors of the late 19th and early 20th century German Empire ever occupied the castle; in 1945 it briefly became the home of the former Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany, son of the last Hohenzollern monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Friedrich Ludwig of Hohenzollern-Hechingen (1 September 1688 in Strasbourg – 4 June 1750 at Lindich Castle in Hechingen) was prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen.
Sigmaringen is located on the southern edge of the Swabian Jura, a plateau region in southern Baden-Württemberg. The Hohenzollern castle was built below the narrow Danube river valley in the modern Upper Danube Nature Park (German: "Naturpark Obere Donau"). The castle rises above the Danube on a towering chalk projection that is a spur of the white Jura Mountains formation. The hill is known simply as the "Schlossberg" or Castle Rock. The "Schlossberg" is about long and up to above the river. On this free-standing towering rock, the princely Hohenzollern castle is the largest of the Danube valley castles. The sheer cliffs and steep sides of the tower made it a natural site for a well-protected medieval castle.
Only written records exist of the original castle built in the High Middle Ages, built by the Counts of Zollern. Although the House of Hohenzollern itself finds its first mention in 1061,[lower-alpha 2] the castle is first mentioned as "Castro Zolre" in 1267, without any mention of the castle beyond its name, though contemporary sources praised it as the "crown of all castles in Swabia."[5] In 1423 the castle was totally destroyed[6] after a year-long siege by the Swabian League of Cities.
The County of Hohenzollern-Hechingen was established in 1576 with allodial rights. It included the original County of Zollern, with the Hohenzollern Castle and the monastery at Stetten.
Hohenzollern Castle, covering almost all of Mount Hohenzollern's summit, is a structure composed of four primary parts: military architecture, the palatial buildings, chapels, and the gardens.
The current castle was built by Hohenzollern scion Crown-Prince Frederick William IV of Prussia. Traveling through southern Germany en route to Italy in 1819 he wished to learn about his family's roots, so climbed to the top of Mount Hohenzollern. He would write in 1844 as King:[7]
The memory of the year [18]19, to me is exceedingly lovely, and like a beautiful dream, especially the sunset we saw from one of the castle bastions. [...] Now is a desire, a dream of [my] youth, to see Hohenzollern Castle again made habitable.
The first fortress on the mountain was constructed in the early 11th century. Over the years the House of Hohenzollern split several times, but the castle remained in the Swabian branch, the dynastic seniors of the Franconian-Brandenburgian cadet branch that later acquired its own imperial throne. This castle was completely destroyed in 1423 after a ten-month siege by the free imperial cities of Swabia. A larger and sturdier structure was constructed from 1454 to 1461, which served as a refuge for the Catholic Swabian Hohenzollerns, including during the Thirty Years' War. By the end of the 18th century it was thought to have lost its strategic importance and gradually fell into disrepair, leading to the demolition of several dilapidated buildings.
The County of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was created in 1576, upon the partition of the County of Hohenzollern, a fief of the Holy Roman Empire. When the last count of Hohenzollern, Karl I (1512–1579) died, the territory was divided among his three sons:
The Princes of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen ruled over a small principality in southwest Germany, with a seat at Sigmaringen Castle. Unlike the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg and Prussia, the Hohenzollerns of Sigmaringen remained Roman Catholic, along with their cousins of Hohenzollern-Hechingen, the senior line of the Swabian branch of the House of Hohenzollern, and Hohenzollern of Haigerloch.
A perron leads up to the ancestry hall, where one enters the Count's Hall (German: Grafensaal), which covers the entirety of the southern wing. The rib vaulting of the Count's Hall, adorned with grisailles by Stüler depicting the history of the House of Hohenzollern and pointed-arch windows, is supported by eight free standing red marble columns. Below the Count's Hall is the old castle kitchen, today a treasure chamber. Next to the Count's Hall is the Emperor's Tower and the Bishop's Niche, following the library decorated with murals of the Hohenzollern history by Wilhelm Peters. The Margrave's Tower contains the King's parlor, also referred to as the Margrave's room, contrary to Stüler's terminology.
In 1487 rule of the city fell to the Hohenzollern. In 1567 under Christoph von Hohenzollern-Haigerloch the area around Haigerloch was an independent territory within the area of the Holy Roman Empire as "Hohenzollern-Haigerloch". In this period, the present castle complex was built on the Schlossberg as the residence of the counts of Hohenzollern-Haigerloch, replacing the former high-medieval structure. In 1634 rule of the city descended to the line of "Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen", whose residence city was the city of Haigerloch between 1737 and 1769.