Bollheim Castle

Bollheim Castle is a vanished noble residence in Oberelvenich, a district of Zülpich in the Euskirchen district of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The castle was located close to the former and important Roman road from Reims to Cologne. As it lay in the marshy floodplains of the Rotbach, it was referred to as a moated castle.

The estate was already mentioned in 1067, when Archbishop Anno II of Cologne transferred the 500-acre property to St. George's Abbey in Cologne. The castle was first documented in 1331. After destructions and a lightning strike in the Middle Ages, the manor house was rebuilt as a Baroque castle from 1682 onwards.

Knight Godart von Boylheim (today: Gottfried von Bollheim) was the first owner of the castle. Around 1379, the castle passed to the von Vlatten family. Werner von Vlatten sold the village with the castle to the Count of Blankenheim in 1401. Another change of ownership followed to the later long-term owners, the von Hompesch family.

During the Thirty Years' War, in the winter of 1641/42, the Hessians and Weimarers, allied with the French, moved into the castle. Wilhelm Hugo von Hompesch sold the estate in 1843 for 86,000 Thalers to Ludwig Prosper, Duke of Arenberg.

The castle was demolished between 1882 and 1885, allegedly due to dilapidation, by the von Arenberg family; only the outbuildings and the gatehouses have survived to this day.

After several changes of ownership to private individuals, Arnold Langen and several farmers bought the remaining outbuildings in October 1982 and have since operated a Demeter farm there.