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1233
The castle on the King's Rock is first recorded in 1233
By far the oldest written record of a castle on the Königstein is a deed by King Wenceslas I of Bohemia from 1233. It was first described as Königstein, King's Rock, in the Upper Lusatian Border Charter of 1241. The oldest surviving structure is the castle chapel, built at the turn of the 13th century.
The rock
The rock plateau rises 240 metres above the Elbe
The 9.5-hectare rock plateau rises 240 metres above the Elbe and has over 50 buildings, some over 400 years old. The rampart run of the fortress is 1,800 metres long, with walls up to 42 metres high. It is one of the largest hilltop fortifications in Europe.
240 mthe height of the rock plateau above the Elbe
The well
A well 152.5 metres deep was bored into the rock
In the centre of the site is a 152.5-metre-deep well, the deepest in Saxony and second-deepest in Europe. It was bored into the rock between 1563 and 1569. Until then the garrison had to obtain water from cisterns and by collecting rainwater.
A prison
It served for centuries as a state prison
The fortress, nicknamed the Saxon Bastille, was for centuries used as a state prison. It is still intact and is now one of Saxony's foremost tourist attractions, with 700,000 visitors per year.
An abbey
For a few years a monastery stood on the rock
In 1516 Duke George the Bearded, a fierce opponent of the Reformation, founded a Celestine abbey on the Königstein. It closed again in 1524 after Duke George's death, when Saxony became Evangelical.
Day 4, evening
It comes after Bastei Bridge.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Königstein Fortress, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.