The Kaiserpfalz Gelnhausen is a former imperial palace in Germany, 45 km away from Frankfurt.
Gelnhausen Palace History
Gelnhausen Palace was founded by Frederick I Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, who apparently planned it as part of a gradual expansion of his ancestral Hohenstaufen lands.
Situated on an island in the River Kinzig, the palace is a fortress protected by water. Next to the palace, Frederick founded a new town with a regular street plan and two markets on the great Frankfurt–Leipzig trade route.
The Imperial Palace of Gelnhausen seems to be the earliest building on the site. Dendrochronological tests have now provided a date of 1182 for one of the foundations piles driven in at the gateway of Gelnhausen Palace. Since the palace rests on approximately 18,000 to 20,000 such piles, which would have taken 15 to 20 years to drive in, this provides a relative date of the castle’s foundation year.
Gelnhausen Castle fell into decay in the 14th century because of disturbances in its foundations, and it has been a ruin for centuries. Nevertheless, almost all the plan is discernible: a surrounding wall of rusticated masonry, a gateway divided into two aisles, each of three bays, with the palace chapel above, a tower built of rusticated masonry connected to the gate-house behind the defensive wall, and the main living quarters set at an angle of 110 degrees to the gate-house.
Excavations made around 1930 revealed the foundations of a building adjoining the living quarters to the east, as well as those of a thick-walled round tower and of the castle guards’ houses.
Visit Gelnhausen Palace
You can reach the town of Gelhausen by following the A66 motorway. The Gelnhausen Castle is in ruins but they are pretty well preserved.
Kaiserpfalz Gelnhausen Location
Burgstraße 14, 63571 Gelnhausen, Germany