Orsbach Castle

Orsbach Castle is a medieval castle complex in the district of Orsbach near Aachen, whose origins probably date back to Carolingian times.
About five kilometres outside the old Aachen city centre to the west, north of the old military road from Aachen to the river ports to Maastricht, rises a high plateau on which royal estates were located in the Middle Ages, from whose respective owners the scholasters of the Aachen Marienstift received the tithes. Some of these estates were transferred to the van Orlosberg family as a hereditary fief, which can be traced back to the 13th century. At the beginning of the 15th century, a castle-like fortification was built next to the farm buildings and a small Romanesque church for the purpose of monitoring the important economic route from Aachen to Maastricht, which was easily visible from here, over which a large part of the trade and troop convoys passed. The tower of this castle now served as one of the eight reporting and monitoring towers of the Aachen Empire, between which acoustic and optical communication took place within the territory of the empire and with the city center itself. In this way, the castle also became part of the Landwehr of the Aachen Landgraben, which was built near Orsbach in 1453, the border fortification of the Aachen Empire, which was built in the years 1419 to 1568 in accordance with the treaty between the Duchy of Jülich and the Free Imperial City of Aachen and here in Orsbach advanced furthest to the west. As the Aachen city accounts of 1376 show, the van Orlosberg family received an addition to the name by Aurelii or Amelii van O. referred to as Millis de O. His descendants have adopted the name Millis as his family name. The name is derived from Amelii and from the function of the family = milites, here meaning Imperial Knight. Later, the name Millis became the family name Milles.

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