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Origin and history

Thanvillé Castle, located in the Lower Rhine in the east of the eponymous village, rises in the valley of Villé, near an ancient salt road, a medieval strategic axis. Unlike the perched castles, it is located in the valley bottom, near a topographic narrowing between the hills of Galgenrain and Hollé. Its location reflects both a desire for road control and an adaptation to local geological constraints, without a conventional military dominant position.

The first mention of a castle in Thanvillé dates back to 1089, evoked by the chronicle of Jean de Bayon: the accidental death of a minister of Count Hugo VI d'Eguisheim on a construction site. However, the reliability of this text — written three centuries after the facts and known by a 16th century copy — is questionable. No archaeological or documentary evidence confirms the completion of this medieval castle, whose existence remains hypothetical. The silences of the sources until the 16th century suggest either its disappearance or a discreet occupation, like other Alsatian castles not mentioned for centuries.

A building was certified in 1507 when the Duke René de Lorraine handed it over to Gaspard de Hattstatt under condition of repair. Damaged during Protestant revolts in 1541, it was sold to the Vidranges, who owned it until it was destroyed by fire in 1571. Jean Friedrich de Worms bought the ruins and rebuilt the castle between 1572 and 1598, adding bastioned towers to strengthen its defences. Transferred to his son Friedrich de Tanviller, the building was set on fire again in 1633 during the Thirty Years' War, then partially restored in 1660 by Bazin de Chanlas, which was confined to the house.

In the 18th century, Charles-Frédéric de Lort de Saint-Victor modernized the castle (1752): draining the ditches, remodeling the facades, creating a French garden and rebuilding the communes. This work partially erases its defensive character to adopt a classic residential style. The family of Castex, owner from 1786, undertook interior embellishments in the nineteenth century (glass windows, furniture, paintings), but the castle was looted and damaged during the wars of 1870, 1914-1918 and 1939-1945.

Architecturally, the castle presents a square plan with towers surrounded by ditches. Its facades in stoneware stoneware, enhanced by dotted pink sandstone chains, date mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries. The attic windows bear the initials of Theodore de Castex (XIXth century), while the elevations combine bays in segmentary arc, murderous and neo-Renaissance decorations. Ranked Historic Monument in 1989, it retains protected elements such as its stairwell, its escarp wall and its southern gate.

Private property since 1979, the castle has had various uses: country hospital in 1914-1918, prison in 1944, and intermittent residence of Castex under German annexation (1871-1918). Successive restorations, often forced by war damage or financial difficulties, altered its original aspect, but made it a witness to architectural and political transformations in Alsace, between the late Middle Ages and the contemporary era.

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