Castle of Haut-Ribeaupierre: A Medieval Hilltop Fortress in France
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- France
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- Medieval
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- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
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- Military
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- Castle
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History
Castle of Haut-Ribeaupierre is a medieval hilltop castle ruin in France, above Ribeauvillé in the Haut-Rhin département. Its surviving form developed chiefly during the thirteenth century, and the site belongs to the group of three Ribeaupierre castles overlooking the town, together with Saint-Ulrich and Girsberg.
Early occupation and medieval foundations
Pottery fragments show that the summit was occupied during the Bronze Age and the Hallstatt period. Iron Age sherds and Roman coins found on or around the present castle site point to continued settlement before the medieval fortress was built. A predecessor fortification probably arose between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Protected by several ramparts and ditches, it covered approximately 150 by 80 metres. The northern half survives in part, while the southern section was partly covered by the present castle during the first half of the thirteenth century.
The castle enters the written record in 1254, when the early lords of Altenkastel were mentioned. They were probably lower-ranking nobles serving the Ribeaupierre family and acting as castle retainers at Haut-Ribeaupierre. The stronghold was initially held as a fief of the Bishopric of Bamberg. The reason for Bamberg’s possession of this distant site is uncertain, although it may once have been imperial property granted to the bishopric by King Henry II in 1007.
The Bishopric of Basel gradually replaced Bamberg as feudal overlord. The Ribeaupierres acknowledged the Bishop of Basel in 1268, even though Bamberg continued to assert feudal authority during the fourteenth century. In 1288, Anselm of Ribeaupierre received Haut-Ribeaupierre and nearby Saint-Ulrich when the family estates were divided. By the end of the thirteenth century, the castle had become a residence of the Ribeaupierre family, the local noble house that controlled the lordship of Ribeauvillé.
The Ribeaupierre residence and prison
Bruno I of Ribeaupierre became lord of Haut-Ribeaupierre in 1368. The following year he entered the service of Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and fought the English alongside French forces during the Hundred Years’ War, the long conflict between the English and French crowns. In 1384, Bruno imprisoned the English knight John Harleston and twelve companions at the castle, despite Harleston’s imperial safe-conduct. Their release followed prolonged ransom negotiations and political pressure from Strasbourg, King Wenceslas, and King Richard II of England.
The proposed ransom included 30,000 gold francs, twenty pieces of the finest English linen, twenty war swords, and twenty daggers. Bruno later entered the service of King Charles VI of France, granted him the right to enter the castle in 1386, and released Harleston in 1387. Emperor Wenceslas then pardoned Bruno and confirmed his possession of Haut-Ribeaupierre, while receiving a right of entry himself.
After another division of the family estates, the castle passed to Ulrich VIII of Ribeaupierre. He granted Duke Charles II of Lorraine the right of entry in 1424. Ulrich ordered extensive building work in 1426, followed by further work in 1481. The 1426 campaign is also associated with Charles II or with construction carried out at his direction, so its attribution is not uniform.
Haut-Ribeaupierre again served as a prison during the fifteenth century. Philippe de Croÿ, Count of Chimay, was held there from 11 January to 18 May 1477 after the castle lord captured him at the Battle of Nancy, where he had fought against Charles the Bold. Before 1498, William of Ribeaupierre imprisoned his own son Sebastian at the castle for handling the family fortune with excessive extravagance.
Late military use and decline
By the end of the fifteenth century at the latest, the Ribeaupierres had placed the castle under the authority of governors. In 1528, when French military intervention in Alsace was expected, a garrison was hastily installed and the keep was used as a watchtower. Its soldiers were instructed to fire two cannon shots if a forest fire broke out and three if an enemy approached.
The final recorded building works took place in 1572 and 1573. Haut-Ribeaupierre was no longer inhabited by the late sixteenth century, although it remained a prison for thieves and poachers during the first quarter of the seventeenth century. An engraving by Matthäus Merian from 1643 shows the castle without roofs. The precise date of abandonment is unknown, and the ruin’s deterioration may have been connected with the Thirty Years’ War, the European conflict fought mainly between 1618 and 1648.
When the Ribeaupierre family became extinct in 1673, the lordship of Ribeauvillé passed to the Wittelsbach line of Palatinate-Birkenfeld. The ruin is now owned by the French state and France’s National Forestry Office. It has held protection as a French monument historique, a legally protected historic monument, since 1 October 1841, with that protection also recorded in the Journal officiel in 1930. Restoration and consolidation were under way in 2017.
Remains
Castle of Haut-Ribeaupierre occupies the summit of a mountain approximately 645 metres above sea level, about 1.2 kilometres in a straight line from Ribeauvillé. Saint-Ulrich and Girsberg stand on the southern slope approximately 100 metres below it. The summit has an elongated, roughly pear-shaped outline, measuring about 150 metres from north to south, 51 metres across at the north, and 15 metres across at the south.
The complex is divided into an upper castle and a lower castle. Its development took place through five principal phases: an earlier prehistoric or early historic fortification, the thirteenth-century upper castle and keep, the later lower castle, a southern bastion added in the fifteenth century, and a second southern gate added in the sixteenth century. Most walls use porphyritic granite rubble quarried from the castle rock, while sandstone forms the corner blocks and several door and window surrounds. Ramparts and ditches from the earlier defensive system surround the ruins and were partly covered by the later castle.
Upper castle
The upper castle occupies an elongated rocky spur in the southeast of the summit, approximately 12 metres above the lower castle. Its strongest surviving feature is the circular keep, the principal fortified tower of a castle. A filter cistern and the remains of a residential building occupy the southern edge of the same rocky area.
Circular keep
The keep has an external diameter of about 10.70 metres and walls approximately 3.4 metres thick. Its outer facing is built with sandstone bossage blocks, several of which carry masons’ marks. The tower rises about 23.25 metres and originally contained four storeys separated by timber floors.
Narrow openings alone light the lowest storey. The elevated entrance lies on the southeast side at first-floor level and was formerly approached by a covered wooden gallery. Beam sockets and a corbel stone survive from that structure. During the late Middle Ages, the second storey was raised into a full-height storey and fitted with a projecting garderobe, a medieval latrine extending beyond the wall. The slightly projecting third storey retains a battlement course whose brickwork was reconstructed during a nineteenth-century restoration.
Water supply and residential remains
The filter cistern lies at the southern edge of the upper-castle rock. Designed to collect and filter water, it measures 3.45 metres in diameter and is covered by a domed vault. A residential building once stood between the cistern and the keep. Its surviving fabric consists of a retaining wall made from sandstone and granite rubble.
Lower castle
The lower castle extends west and north of the upper castle and probably dates from the late thirteenth or fourteenth century. Its remains include the northern and northeastern curtain wall, the enclosing defensive wall of a castle, together with parts of a large residential building. A second entrance on the south side developed into a double-gate complex during the fifteenth or sixteenth century.
Curtain wall and residential building
The northern and northeastern curtain wall is about 1.7 metres thick. The northern section still rises approximately 10 metres and formerly carried a wall-walk, the passage along the top of a defensive wall. A small gate in the northeastern wall has a non-original surround made from reused architectural fragments in 1904 and 1905. In front of it, limited remains of a zwinger, an enclosed space between defensive lines, survive.
The former two-storey residential building on the west side had an internal width of 8.30 metres. Its floors were supported by timber ceilings, and a high pitched roof covered the building. A projecting garderobe served its upper storey.
Southern double gate
The southern entrance consists of a double-gate complex built in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The late Gothic gate was constructed in two stages in front of the original lower-castle entrance. The first gate, perhaps erected during the works of 1426, has a passage with a segmental arch and a surviving recess for a drawbridge. A former postern beside it disappeared when the second gate was built farther south.
The second southern gate was never fully completed. Its segmental-arched passage also has a drawbridge recess, while a rectangular pedestrian entrance beside it was reached by its own drawbridge. Both gates formerly carried wooden hoardings, defensive galleries projecting from the walls. A round stair tower immediately beside the lower-castle gate provided access to the upper castle and could itself be reached only by a drawbridge.
Southern artillery work
South of the cistern, remains on the slope belong to a polygonal building from the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The structure probably served as an artillery work intended to defend the gate and bridge. The castle as a whole is now extensively ruined and heavily overgrown.
