If you travel through the Oberlausitz, whether by bicycle or by foot, you will discover again and again remaining castle walls or ruins from long-forgotten times. These used to be castles, palaces or settlements.
Burker Mountain
With a height of 198,5m he allows a view over the realm near Bautzen and the southern bordering mountain range.
Different mining enterprises, which exploited for more than one hundred years around the Burker Mountain sand and gravel, encountered again and again graves of different primeval epochs.
These graves belonged to settlements, which had settled in the Spree area. The grave area stretches nearly to the border of Niedergurig.
Sunken Palace
The Dubringer bog is the largest inter-connected bog-complex of east Saxony. Endangered animals and plants species live here.
In the 12th and 13th century a robber knight's palace is believed to have been standing right in the middle of the bog. The robber knight was cursed, so the legend says, for his cruelties. May he never find rest and peace after his death.
Apparently one can still hear the howling and moaning from the depths of the bog where the palace once was.
Prietitzer Entrenchment
The protection facility was probably built in the 10th century by the Milzenern for the protection against King Henry the Fowler. Today one can only see a crescent-shaped section wall. The Milzener settled in the Oberlausitz in great numbers but capitulated in 932 and had to pay tribute to the German crown.
But the castle was still used as defence facility into the 12th and 13th century by the Germans.
Ostro - The 'Saxon Trojan'
The most impressive ground monument of the Oberlausitz is the 260 x 160m large rampart of Ostro. Paul Scholze called it in 1918 in his book also the 'Saxon Trojan'.
1400 - 500 BC is the heyday of Lausitz culture, then 1000 BC an open settlement was constructed on the Ostroer Schanze. In the 7th BC the settlement Ostro was secured for the first time. Because of that there was only one entrance, visitors had to walk Dadurch gab es nur einen Zugang und dieser lag so, dass Besucher direkt am Wall entlang mussten.
Massenhaft geborgene Getreidereste zeigen, das Ostro bei der Verwaltung, Lagerung und Verteilung der Lebensmittel eine bedeutende Rolle spielte.
From 500 BC the whole of the Oberlausitz has no human settlements, also Ostro. In the 10th century it is being activated again by the Milzenern.
Since then the Ostroer Schanze is separated into a upper castle, 80 x 80 m, and in a lower castle.
In the 13th century the last building was added, the Turmhügel at the Wallkrone.
Shortly after political altercations the large rural castles of the Lausitz lost their function.
Ortenburg
The construction of a ring wall in Bautzen started under Henry the Fowler in the year 928 and was finished by his son Otto I. apart from the ring wall Otto I ordered the building of the Ortenburg but the castle was first mentioned only in the year 1405.
From the 13th to the 17th century the castle was seat of the bailiff and from the 17th to the 19th century it housed the district authority region of the Oberlausitz; today the Saxon Higher Administrative Court and the Sorbian museum.
At the Ortenburg is the Matthias tower with the St. George chapel and the gate-relief of the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus situated. The oldest part of the castle is the castle water tower. The Hofrichterhaus (court judge house) with its unusual chimney is there and the salt house where today the Sorbian museum is housed.
Castle Ruin Körse
In Kirschau one can visit the castle ruin Körse, which was constructed in the Middle Ages on a granite rock.
Many of the finds found during the excavations are at the castle museum but the museum is still not open.
A tunnel is situated at the western rock below the castle. This is supposed to be an underground castle walk but it leads only a few metres into the rock.
The castle ruin has been listed in 1936.
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