Burg Reifferscheid - Reifferscheid, Germany - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

An information panel at the entrance tower reads:

"History
In 1106, the first Reifferscheid Castle was destroyed in a war between its owner Duke Henry of Lorraine and Emperor Henry W. and rebuilt shortly afterwards on its current site. The fortified settlement with a parish church mentioned in 1130 was built to strengthen the castle.
In the period that followed, the noble lords of Reifferscheid, probably a collateral line from the House of Lorraine, expanded their ancestral seat into an impregnable fortress. The combined armies of Cologne, Aachen, Liège, Jülich and Brabant were unable to conquer Reifferscheid despite a three-month siege in the summer of 1385.
The lords of Reifferscheid rose to become powerful and influential counts (1455) and princes (1804), became hereditary marshals of Electoral Cologne, lords of Alfter, Bedburg and Dyck, where they owned and resided in an independent imperial county. They rarely lived in Reifferscheid from the 16th century onwards, but continued to maintain the castle and town (since 1390).
In 1689, troops of the French King Louis XIV destroyed the fortifications and walls. The surviving castle was expropriated after 1794 and largely demolished. In 1889, the princely family bought back their old castle, but after the death of the last prince in 1959, his widow, Princess Cecilie von Salm-Reifferscheid-Dyck, donated the ruins to the municipality in 1965."

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