A castle is first mentioned in 1214, and the lower castle was founded between 1294 and 1303, when the first document names two castles. Lightning destroyed the upper castle in 1537. The article calls the ruin among the most important Renaissance structures north of the Alps and gives the styles as Gothic and Renaissance.
The Friedrichsbau was built from 1601 to 1607 under Friedrich IV, designed by Johannes Schoch with sculpture by Sebastian Götz. It has a court chapel on the ground floor and princely apartments above. Carl Schäfer restored it in historicist style, in 1890 to 1900 or 1897 to 1900 by two accounts.
French troops set the castle on fire on March 2, 1689, and blew up its surviving towers and walls in 1693. Lightning caused another fire in 1764. In 1890 a specialist commission ruled that rebuilding was not possible and chose preservation. The castle sits about 260 feet (80 m) up the Königstuhl hillside.
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