Castle Dillenburg, in the provincial town of

Dillenburg Dillenburg, officially Oranienstadt Dillenburg, is a town in Hesse's Gießen region in Germany. The town was formerly the seat of the old Dillkreis district, which is now part of the Lahn-Dill-Kreis. The town lies on the German- Dutch holiday roa ...

Hesse-Nassau The Province of Hesse-Nassau () was a Provinces of Prussia, province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1868 to 1918, then a province of the Free State of Prussia until 1944. Hesse-Nassau was created as a consequence of the Austro-Prussian War of ...

, is situated on a hill (elevation 958 feet) above the Dill river, 25 miles northwest from

Gießen Giessen, spelled in German (), is a town in the German state () of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 university students. Th ...

on the Giessen-

Troisdorf Troisdorf () is a city in the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis (district), in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Geography Troisdorf is located approximately 22 kilometers south of Cologne and 13 kilometers north east of Bonn. Division of the city Troisdorf consi ...

railway line. The main building of the old castle was deconstructed in 1760 after suffering fire from cannon damage in the

Seven Years' War The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763, was a Great Power conflict fought primarily in Europe, with significant subsidiary campaigns in North America and South Asia. The protagonists were Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and Kingdom of Prus ...

. Today the hill above the town still has the ruins of the 17th-century fortifications of the old schloss Dillenburg, but nothing at all remains of the original fortifications, which were mostly wood. It was founded by Count Henry the Rich of Nassau, about the year 1240, and later became the birthplace of Prince William of Orange in 1533. Due to the effects of the

Protestant reformation The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and ...

, in the town below is the (since 1530) Evangelical church but formerly Johanniskirche from 1491, with the vault of the princes of Nassau-Dillenburg.

Wilhelmsturm

In 1872 Princess Marianne, the daughter of King Willem I, helped finance the creation of a new lookout tower, Wilhelmsturm, which also houses the Oranje-Nassaumuseum. The museum commemorates

William the Silent William the Silent or William the Taciturn (; 24 April 153310 July 1584), more commonly known in the Netherlands as William of Orange (), was the leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish Habsburg Netherlands, Habsburgs that set off the ...

who plotted his rebellion against the Spanish Netherlands from his home on this spot. The tower is an area landmark and is one of the points along the Orange Route and Rothaarsteig.

References

External links

Dillenburg museum website
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