As a child you could hear your father up there, amazed, telling you that it was exactly where he was standing that the Staufer King Philipp of Swabia once said: "This is the crown of the land". Only later did people understand: Not out of love for nature, but as a sign of his rule, the monarch built the castle Landskron in 1206 on the mountain then called Mons Gimmiche. It was built as an imperial fortress to protect the royal office of Sinzig and the Aachen-Frankfurter-Heerstraße passing by to the north, and also as a bulwark against the Archbishop of Cologne, who sided with Otto IV, the counter-king of the Guelphs.

It was, however, that same King Otto IV who, after Philip's assassination in 1208, continued the building of the fortress and appointed Gerhard von Sinzig as administrator of the castle. His descendants, four other Gerhards, followed him in office. The conflict between the Staufern and Guelphs determined the development of the castle in the High and Late Middle Ages, from where changing noble families ruled after 1370. From 1659 it was a garrison of the Duchy of Jülich. In 1677 the main building burnt down and in 1682 Palatine Count Philipp Wilhelm, Duke of Jülich, had the castle destroyed.

What remained? Only the remains of the walls of the lower gate, the tower foundation at the middle gate - many believe it to be a well - and walls from the upper gate to the present meadow plateau still stand? Not only all that. For there is more past in the depths than above ground, and the hidden has always captured the imagination of finders and history lovers.

The Arkum Association, the Association for the Promotion of Archaeology, Art and Museum Culture in Bad Neuenahr, also wanted to know more. It invested a four-figure sum and commissioned a specialist company to "examine the entire area of the Niederburg on the meadow using ground radar". This, according to the chairwoman, Eva-Maria Kreuter, was done "in consultation with the owner of the mountain and castle Landskrone Graf von Kanitz and mayor Guido Orthen".

Because of Corona, a press conference on the investigation already carried out on 6 July was cancelled. But in the YouTube video "Terra Arwilre" by Günter Heindrichs, the research project leader archaeologist Gabriel Heeren, member of Arkum, explains that especially the lower castle area, where "the inhabitants of the castle lived in different buildings, in stone buildings, but also half-timbered buildings" has been largely preserved.

It was explored without digging. Heeren, a member of staff at the Directorate General for Cultural Heritage, State Archaeology in Koblenz, explains that this involved "dividing the area into sections, and parallel lines were then traced with the measuring device and the individual data recorded. Through the archaeological data evaluation, the association hopes to "find a new picture of the castle complex and especially the inner castle area".

In the meantime, it has received results of "numerous previously unknown archaeological building structures". At least three buildings measuring approximately 10 by 15 metres have been discovered, including the cistern, which was already uncovered around 1910. "Most of the documented building structures belong to the Middle Ages and modern times," says Gabriel Heeren. The sponsoring association and expert Heeren will reveal more when they deliver their presentation originally planned for Friday.

However, when asked by the GA, the archaeologist replied agreeing what is basically true about assumptions of a pre-medieval Celtic and Roman settlement of the Landskrone: "Coarse, Roman utility pottery of the 3rd and 4th centuries, Roman brooches and coins as find material from the Landskrone clearly indicate Roman settlement," says Heeren. In 1970, Otto Kleemann still wrote in his "Pre- and Early History of the Ahrweiler District" that excavations made during the construction of the Hotel Möhren in 1910 on the Landskrone were findings from a collection of antiquities belonging to the lords of the castle.

However, Karl-Josef Gilles refuted this in his book "Late Roman hilltop settlements in the Eifel and Hunsrück" in 1985, and instead explained it: "The hilltop may therefore have been settled in the Neolithic period, perhaps even in the Late Latène period, before it was abandoned again in the 4th century AD".

So there was both an early and a Roman settlement of the mountain. There is also evidence of the collection culture of the lords of Landskron Castle. However, Heeren's study of a highly interesting cast bronze tetradrachm found on the slope of Landskron Castle, published in this year's Numismatic Bulletin, underlines how much the interpretation of finds depends on experts.

He found out that the coin with Zeus depiction and Alexander inscription was "the cast of a forgery". The same mint marks, wrongly combined, were found on a gold coin in the collection of the nobleman Pembroke.

From this the archaeologist deduces: "The date of origin of the casting can be safely placed in the 16th century up to the time around 1746, based on the English Pembroke collection and the historically handed down collection activity at Landskron Castle". But pure dating is not everything. Such findings also allow us to draw conclusions about the social position of the collection's owners, in this case the imperial knighthood.

The method involves sending high-frequency electromagnetic waves into the ground to register reflected signals. The system evaluates the reflected energy and intensity of the signals, which can be used to make building structures hidden in the ground, such as walls or wells, visible again. The structures are imaged in greater detail by ground radar than any other method. In addition, statements can be made about the depth of the structures detected.

Original text: Hildegard Ginzler

Translation: Mareike Graepel