page_title: Sayn Castle
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Sayn Castle / Description
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Burg Sayn in Bendorf
context_page_description: The ruins of Sayn Castle, the 12th century family castle of the counts of Sayn and Sayn-Wittgenstein, are in Sayn, part of the borough of Bendorf on the Rhine, between Koblenz and Neuwied in the county of Mayen-Koblenz in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
context_section_description: Whilst the southern, western and northern flanks of Sayn drop steeply into the valley, the flat hill ridge on the eastern side, from where the castle is accessed, is protected by a deep and wide artificial neck ditch. In order to provide additional protection a mighty shield wall with a wall walk was built above the moat. In the northeastern area of the site stands a well preserved, roughly 20-metre-high bergfried, which dominates the appearance of Sayn Castle. The construction period of the bergfried, whose walls are 2.4 metres thick in the middle, dates to the late 12th century. A wall running south from the bergfried, also guarded by an allure, divides the inner bailey into two courtyards.
  Excavations in recent times have revealed that the palas originally stood on the south side of the smaller eastern courtyard, but was later moved to the western spur of the site. Today nothing is left apart from a 25-metre-deep castle well and an octagonal staircase tower. These excavations also uncovered the foundation walls of a castle chapel at the southwestern corner in the form of a simultaneum with three apses and its well preserved, ornately decorated floor dating to about 1200.
  In front of the southern enceinte is a 90-metre-long and 20-metre-wide zwinger, guarded to the east by a small defensive tower and to the west by a barbican. Here there is also a smaller gateway zwinger and, further down the hillside, the Mittlere Burghaus ("Middle Castle House"), which is joined to the inner ward by a wall. The excavations, carried out by the State Conservation Department, also exposed the original access track to the inner ward along the southern flank through the gate zwinger, which may now be used again.
caption: View of Sayn Castle
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