Bürresheim Castle

Bürresheim Castle (German: Schloss Bürresheim) is located in the Nette Valley, northwest of the German town of Mayen near Sankt Johann (Rhineland-Palatinate). Thanks to the castle's strategic location in the border area of the Electorate of Cologne and the Electorate of Trier, the archbishops significantly influenced the history of the castle.

==History==
The castle first appears along with the names of its then-owners Eberhard and Mettfried in a document from 1157. Eberhard's son Philip sold his share to the Archbishop of Cologne, Philip I of Heinsberg, shortly before 1189, only to subsequently regain it as a fief. The Archdiocese of Trier also sought to defend its interests and acquired the other half of the castle under Archbishop Heinrich II of Fistingen.

Along with Eltz and Lissingen castles, Bürresheim is the only castle in the Eifel that was never conquered or destroyed and withstood all wars of the 17th and 18th centuries as well as the social unrest of the French Revolution unscathed.

==Architecture==
The complex, which today appears as a unified whole, assumed its current main form only from the 15th century. Before that, there were two completely separate castles that shared only the Romanesque keep from the 12th century. The castle was once defended by ring walls and two moats, but the moats were filled in and only a few remnants of the ring walls remain.

Keep
The keep is the oldest part of the castle complex. Previously, the keep could only be accessed through a high opening in the wall, but in the 17th century, a permanent baroque staircase was constructed from the inner courtyard. It is believed that in the 15th century, the keep was raised by a floor to house the tower watchman's living quarters on the fifth floor.

Cologne Castle
The namesake of this part of the castle was the initiator Archbishop Philip I of Heinsberg, who had the building constructed in 1339 in the western part of the complex. It consisted of a large outer bailey, of which only remnants of the ring wall and the Gothic inner castle remain today. Access was from the northwest over a drawbridge. The inner castle consisted of the gatehouse with double towers, which also served as a shield wall. Behind it stood a hall structure: a large hall with a small separate chapel and below it a cellar with a barrel vault.

After the expansion of the Trier castle starting in 1659, the Cologne castle was only used for commercial purposes and eventually fell into decline. Today, the Cologne castle is a ruin.

Trier Castle
The oldest preserved parts of the Trier castle date back to the governors of Leutesdorf, who had residences built at the border of the Cologne castle in the second half of the 14th century. All other buildings emerged in their current forms under the lords of Breidbach. Gerhard and Johan of Breidbach had a three-story residence built in the southeast after 1473 with a round tower that had four-meter-thick walls. The upper tower floor of half-timbering was added later. After the Breidbach family acquired ownership of the entire complex in 1659, the castle was expanded into a Baroque residence. Between the round tower and the governors’ house, a large southern wing was built, while between 1698-1700, Georg Rheinhard of Breibach closed the last gap between the keep and the Gothic residential buildings with the so-called Kapellenbau. Unusually, the builder, contrary to previous practice, had the chapel installed not on the ground floor but on the first floor.

In the southwestern corner of the castle, a Baroque garden was laid out in 1683. This garden was reconstructed in 1952.

Meuwissen