Maus Castle stands above the village of Wellmich, part of Sankt Goarshausen, on the east bank of the Rhine, north of Katz Castle and opposite Rheinfels Castle. Archbishop-Elector Bohemond II of Trier began construction in 1356 (the infobox lists 1353 or 1356), and successive Electors continued it over the next thirty years. It enforced Trier's newly acquired Rhine toll rights and guarded its borders against the Counts of Katzenelnbogen.
Local folklore says the Katzenelnbogen counts mockingly called it a mouse that the cat of Katz Castle would eat. The ward holds two residential buildings, and a round keep guards the vulnerable uphill side.
Unlike its two neighbors, it was never destroyed. It declined in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Wilhelm Gärtner restored it from 1900 to 1906. Today it houses an aviary with falcons, owls and eagles.
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