Friedestrom Castle

The former state castle of the Archbishops of Cologne is only partially preserved in its medieval form and was located directly on the riverbank until the course of the Rhine changed. It is a two-part castle complex, consisting of a core castle, also called the upper castle, and a hook-shaped outer bailey area located to its west and north. The almost square castle area is located in the southeast corner of Zons and is surrounded on all four sides by a defensive wall, which on the east and south sides also forms the Zons city wall. The thus enclosed castle area measures about 11,000 m² and thus occupies about one sixth of the old town area. This lies quasi like a second, outer bailey in front of the inner bailey. Formerly, the castle complex was additionally separated from the city by a moat in front of the ring wall, but the neighboring lignite opencast mine caused a lowering of the groundwater level, so that all moats are now dry and partly filled in. Various types of stone were used in different masonry techniques during the construction of the castle: in addition to columnar basalt and trachyte from the Drachenfels in the Siebengebirge, tuffs and the brick so typical of the Lower Rhine were also used.

To the south, the entire length of the castle complex is fronted by a Zwinger, on average 28 meters wide, whose south wall was formerly significantly higher than it is today. 12 of the 28 meters are taken up by the partially filled-in castle moat. At the eastern corner of the Zwinger are the remains of a two-story round tower, which formerly served as an icebreaker.

Outer Bailey

From the Zwinger, a late medieval double gate system provides access to the outer bailey. The outer of the two gates, called the South Gate, projects about 15 meters from the ring wall of the castle complex and features Gothic decorative forms. It owes its current, well-preserved condition to a restoration in 1983. Since the late 14th century, it allowed access to the castle independent of the city and was formerly connected to the inner gatehouse of the ring wall by an arched passage. The gate alley walls of the connecting passage are still preserved. The gatehouse has a rectangular floor plan, on which the walls for two stories rise. The masonry of the high ground floor consists of basalt, tuff, and brick, while the upper floor consists of brick masonry. To the left of the large gate with ashlar framing made of trachyte is a small, pointed-arched pedestrian gate. Above the round-arched gate passage, in a small, barred niche with a trefoil blind arch, stands a replica of a Madonna statue from the 15th century, the original of which is in the district museum. On both sides of the niche, weathered coats of arms can be seen. The left one shows the cross as a sign of the Cologne Archdiocese, while the right one shows the double eagle of the city founder as Count of Saarwerden. The corners of the upper floor are marked by corbelled, polygonal corner turrets, which rest on pointed arches and have machicolations.

On the north side of the outer bailey, three buildings are lined up, all of which are now used by the Zons District Museum. The easternmost of them is called the Manor House and received its name when the electoral Cologne Amtmann moved his seat from the core castle there because the west wing had been severely damaged in the Thirty Years' War and was no longer usable for living. The two-story, elongated building with a saddle roof is plastered in yellow and is structured by windows with red and white shutters in nine axes. In its vaulted cellar, there are still two bricked house wells. West of the manor house is the former stable, whose brick building is mostly a new construction from 1974. The two-story building has a saddle roof and windows with light ashlar frames. The easternmost building of the outer bailey's north wing is a modern hall of glass and steel, which is lower than the neighboring building. With its construction year of 1994, it is the youngest building in the entire castle area. Directly to its west, in the ring wall of the outer bailey, is the former city-side entrance of Friedstrom Castle, which is now walled up. The current access from the city east of the manor house was only created after the Thirty Years' War.

At the northwest corner of the outer bailey stands the so-called Juddeturm from the end of the 14th century, which probably received its name, documented since the Middle Ages, from its former owners, the Cologne patrician family Judde. Due to its height of six stories, the round tower gives a very slender impression, although its wall thickness on the ground floor is 2.10 meters. Machicolations and loopholes underline the fact that the tower was very defensible. Up to the circumferential late Gothic frieze between the fifth and sixth stories, the tower's masonry consists of basalt ashlar and brick. The sixth story has a circumferential battlement with brick walls, which rests on corbels with intermediate ashlar pointed arches. Four of the arches are designed as pouring holes. The current baroque ogee dome replaced a blunt conical roof around 1600. It is crowned by an octagonal lantern with a slate dome and weather vane. Inside, the ground floor is occupied by a single octagonal room, spanned by a dome vault with a diameter of 3.30 meters. The windowless room formerly served as a prison, from which serious criminals could be lowered through a floor hatch into the dungeon seven meters below. The first upper floor also has an octagonal room, whose outer walls are still 1.60 meters thick. The room has a fireplace on the northeast wall - as do the rooms on the second and third floors. The upper floors were used for residential purposes and are accessed via a narrow spiral staircase with trachyte steps. The staircase is located in a slender five-sided stair turret on the east side. It is accessible via a narrow passage in the wall thickness of the tower, to which a steep stone staircase on the inside of the ring wall leads up from the castle courtyard.

A large part of the outer bailey area is occupied by a castle park, whose old tree population consists of lime trees, sycamores, and chestnuts and has only recently been supplemented with newly planted ginkgos, copper beeches, and lime trees.

Core Castle

The core castle was formerly separated from the outer bailey by a moat to the west and north. This was 14 meters wide and 6.5 meters deep and had walls on both long sides. While its outer wall was built of basalt, the inner moat wall consists of 18 layers of trachyte ashlar. However, this moat has now dried up and is partly filled in. The four-story gate tower on the west side and the north and south wings, still preserved in their core, date from the Gothic main castle of the 14th century.

The four stories of the gate tower rise above a square floor plan with a side length of 8.40 meters. On the ground floor, made of hewn trachyte ashlar, is the pointed-arched gate, framed by the blind niche of the former drawbridge. The chain holes of the bridge are even still present in the blind arch. The first and second stories have masonry made of tuff and corner quoins made of trachyte. This material is repeated in the ashlar window frames, which were made as mullioned windows on the first upper floor. Above the barrel-vaulted passage are two superimposed rooms that served as guard chambers and still show remnants of fireplaces on the south wall. From the chamber on the second floor, there is access to the battlement on the south side of the core castle. The third upper floor, made of bricks, consists of a projecting battlement with small corner turrets. It rests on a circumferential late Gothic pointed arch frieze made of tuff with pouring openings on the outside of the tower. The upper end is formed by a massive, kinked hip roof, which replaced the dilapidated, original tower roof in the 1970s.

To the north, the medieval ring wall made of basalt adjoins the gate tower. It formerly served as the outer wall for the west wing. The current west wing is a modern new building from 1990, erected over the foundations of the medieval wing. Parts of it are still preserved in the cellar, including a six-meter-deep well last used as a latrine. The north wing of the core castle adjoins the west building at its northern corner. It is not only the youngest part of the historical building fabric but also the best preserved. The two-story building of unplastered brick consists on the ground floor of a single large hall above a late medieval vaulted cellar. During the restoration of the hall in 1989, remnants of ornamented wall paintings from the Gothic period were uncovered. The southern core castle area is occupied by a building of basalt and bricks, whose part near the gate is the only one originally preserved. This also includes a small corner turret at the southwest corner. The majority of the building, however, is a modern creation, including the lean-to roof with dormers. In some places, a dentil frieze of bricks is still preserved at the height of the former eaves cornice. At the southeast corner of the south wing - and thus at the southeast corner of the castle and the city - stands a massive round tower, the so-called Castle Tower. Its base consists of trachyte ashlar with edge trim, while the upper wall sections are made of basalt. It is one of the four former corner towers of the Zons city wall.

The three wings of the upper castle surround a paved inner courtyard, where the foundations of several Romanesque churches were discovered during excavations in the 1980s. The castle area is therefore a protected archaeological monument. The floor plans of two church buildings have been made visible in the courtyard paving: a red marking shows the location of a hall church from around the year 1000, while a church built about two centuries later is marked by gray paving stones.