Dohna Castle

Dohna Castle on the once important medieval trade route from Saxony to Bohemia was the ancestral castle seat of the Burgraves of Dohna. Of the old, once imposing double castle only a few remnants of the walls remain. The ruins of the old castle are located on the hill of Schlossberg near the subsequent suburb of the town of the same name, Dohna, in the district of Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge in Saxony, Germany.

Dohna Castle was probably founded around A.D. 950 by Emperor Otto I on the Schlossberg hill on the site of a Sorbian hillfort fortification. This region around the Schlossberg had been a Sorbian settlement from prehistoric times. The name of the associated settlement was Donin, from which the castle received its name. The castle was the centre of the imperially immediate lordship of the burgraves of Dohna. They had the task of guarding the important trade route between Saxony and Bohemia, hold the conquered and subjugated Sorbs in serfdom and their Christianization by protecting emissaries of the Catholic Church.

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