Liechtenstein
Schellenberg
Schellenberg keeps two ruined castles on one ridge; the bigger one lets you barbecue inside.
Two medieval castles fell to ruin on Schellenberg's wooded ridge in Liechtenstein's northern lowlands, and the larger one now hosts picnics, barbecues and summer events inside its conserved walls. Walk up through the forest and you can spread lunch where a garrison once watched the Rhine Valley.
The Upper Castle in the district of Hinterschloss was begun around 1200 and first appears in a document of 1348; the smaller Lower Castle followed around 1250. Both stood empty from the 16th century, slowly disappearing into the trees, until Prince Franz Josef II gave the overgrown ruins to the Historical Association in 1956 and archaeologists made the walls legible again. Down in the village, the Farmhouse Museum fills the Biedermann-Haus, a timber house raised in 1518 that has been dismantled and rebuilt at three different sites across its five centuries; inside is rural Liechtenstein as it lived around 1900. Families link it all with Wurz und Zirp, a five-kilometre story trail beside the Austrian border with six play stations, three hours of forest and meadow, and one stretch no pushchair will manage.
Solo
The two ruins reward a slow comparing eye: one complex begun around 1200, the other around 1250, with fifty years of castle-building thinking legible between them.
Couple
Book the Weinlaube's farmhouse dining room for the evening, then climb to the Upper Castle beforehand while the light is low on the Rhine Valley.
Family
Children follow Wurz and Zirp between six play-and-discovery stations, then finish inside a real castle ruin; allow about three hours for the full loop.
Friends
Carry sausages and firewood up the ridge: the Upper Castle may be the only medieval ruin anywhere that positively invites a group barbecue.
- The Upper Castle was begun around 1200 and the Lower around 1250; both stand freely accessible on the wooded ridge.
- The larger ruin is kept open for picnics, barbecues and summer events among its conserved walls.
- The Biedermann-Haus of 1518, one of Liechtenstein's oldest wooden houses, holds the Farmhouse Museum's picture of rural life around 1900.
- The Wurz und Zirp trail runs five kilometres beside the Austrian border with six play and discovery stations for children.
Book the Weinlaube at Hinterschloss, a farmhouse with three hundred years of history behind the castle ruins, where the kitchen cooks seasonally, leaf to root, with fire at the centre.
Or carry your own barbecue up to the Upper Castle: the ruin is presented as a place to linger over a grill, with the valley spread out below the walls.
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