Scharfenstein Castle

The former castle complex extended over three rocks with a main castle on the rock plateau in the east. Its access is likely identical to today's ascent path. It runs, fortified by remnants of retaining walls, in a long serpentine loop along the northern flank to the castle site. Below the main plateau, the footpath reaches an elongated rock terrace, which extends to the northeast side of the castle rock and was probably laid out as an outwork or lower castle with a castle courtyard. From it, a wall remnant about 7.5 m long and up to 1.2 m high, made of irregular small ashlar stones, remained on the north side. At its southeastern end, stone steps lead to the large rock plateau of the upper castle. The outer outline of this core castle forms an approximately right-angled trapezoid with side lengths between 35 m in the north and 38 m on the south side, where the settlement area was enlarged by a rectilinear overbuilding of a funnel-shaped rock slide. With 13.5 m on the east side, the complex reaches its greatest width, which remains roughly constant over a length of about 20 m, but then significantly narrows to 8.5 m on the west side. Here, as on the southern edge, there are still small wall remnants of regular small ashlar stones.

Striking is a fragmentarily preserved section of wall made of relatively regularly hewn and laid porphyry ashlar stones on the northern edge of the core castle. To the west, a deep, neck-ditch-like crevice breaks through the main rock and isolates its significantly smaller rock end, which forms the central castle rock. No visible traces of settlement can be seen on it. Separated by a ditch-like depression, the third, western castle rock follows. Here, remnants of a square tower, with a clear width of about 2.70 m and approximately 1.70 m thick masonry, have been preserved. A few meters below, towards the southern valley side, two corner-pillar-like rock workings catch the eye, between which an formerly 8.5 m wide retaining wall ran, of which only small remnants remain. Further in the southwest direction, the rocky terrain slopes gently towards the ridge of Scharfenstein. A niche-like rock recess, which breaks through the ridge approximately halfway along its length, as well as a flattened plateau-like elevation in front of the spur end, possibly served as an advanced lookout. Wooden superstructures would be conceivable here, but are not proven.