The thousand-year-old castle of Purpurkopf in Alsace comes out of the ground

The oldest castle in Alsace, located on the Purpurkopf mountain, has been the subject of extensive excavation work for a year now. It is bearing fruit since the archaeologists, helped by passionate volunteers, have already unearthed half of the site. The whole team still has to work until 2024 to complete the complete exhumation of this historic treasure. This fortified building, which probably dates from the 9th century, was built under the aegis of the family of Pope Leo IX. It is located precisely at the top of Purpurkopf which depends on the municipality of Rosheim in the Bas-Rhin.

This research work is led by two local Indiana Jones, historian Tristan Martine and archaeologist Florent Minot. After a year of work, the researchers themselves are amazed by the magnitude of their discovery. The fortified building is 19m long, 12m wide and the height, impressive, rises to 10m. From the castle, a high point in the region, one could see, and be seen at the time, all the way to Strasbourg! Historical examination of Purpurkopf Castle should advance knowledge of the history of medieval fortifications. This site is indeed unique within a radius of 200 kilometres. Only 12th and 13th century buildings remain. Initially, the researchers, before the actual updating of the building, found furniture in the broad sense, that is to say culinary ceramics, nails, projectile points certainly remains of crossbow bolts, dating from around late antiquity (from the 3rd to the 5th century).

It is precisely this difference in dating between the castle (around 9th century) and the first objects found (around 4th century) around the ruins that are of particular interest to archaeologists. All the hypotheses are on the table: military site, border customs delimiting the limits of the Roman Empire with Germania? Historians and archaeologists still have a year of excavations to document their first intuitions.