Marburg Castle

Marburg Castle is a hilltop fortress that dominates the university town of Marburg an der Lahn. The hill has been fortified since the 11th century, but the castles prominence begins with St Elisabeth of Thuringia, who lived and worked in Marburg from 1228 until her death in 1231, founding a hospital at the base of the castle hill. After her canonisation in 1235, the Teutonic Order built the Elisabeth Church below the castle, one of the first purely Gothic churches in Germany. The castle became the principal seat of the Landgraves of Hesse after the division of the Thuringian inheritance in 1247. The surviving buildings span the 13th to 16th centuries, covering Gothic, late Gothic, and Renaissance phases. The main residential wing was rebuilt by Landgrave Philip the Magnanimous between 1523 and 1548, with the Renaissance portal, the grand staircase tower, and the Knights Hall, a two-storey hall with a coffered ceiling. Philip hosted the Marburg Colloquy in 1529 in the castle the famous theological disputation between Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli over the nature of the Eucharist. The tower offers views over the town and the Lahn valley. The castle houses the Hessian State Museum for cultural history with collections spanning prehistoric, Roman, and medieval artefacts.