Sababurg

Sababurg (Sleeping Beauty Castle)
Zappenburg, Zapfenburg, Dornröschenschloss
Sababurg, town of Hofgeismar
Sababurg and the Reinhardswald from the southwest
Sababurg (Sleeping Beauty Castle)
Coordinates	51°32′37″N 9°32′15″E / 51.54361°N 9.53750°E / 51.54361; 9.53750Coordinates: 51°32′37″N 9°32′15″E / 51.54361°N 9.53750°E / 51.54361; 9.53750
Type	hill castle
Code	DE-HE
Height	315 m above sea level (NHN)
Site information
Condition	preserved or largely preserved
Site history
Built	from 1334

The Sababurg, first called the Zappenburg, then Zapfenburg and today, after the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Sleeping Beauty Castle (German: Dornröschenschloss), is the ruin of a hill castle in the legendary Reinhardswald, a forested upland that runs through the North Hessian county of Kassel. Sababurg is also the name of a district of the town of Hofgeismar in which the castle is found.

The hill castle appears in 1334 as the Zappenburg to protect pilgrims to the nearby pilgrimage site of Gottsbüren. In 1490, the hunting lodge of Zapfenburg grew out of the medieval castle site. After 1957 the site was restored and since 1959 it has housed an hotel. Together with the Trendelburg and Krukenburg the present ruins belong to the three best known castles in the Reinhardswald region, although the latter is just outside this forest. In the surrounding area is the Sababurg Wildlife Park and the virgin forest of Urwald Sababurg. The concept for the board game, Enchanted Forest, was developed from the castle.

The Sababurg stands in the heart of the Reinhardswald in the village of Sababurg in the east-northeast of the Hofgeismar borough of Beberbeck (an estate settlement with a castle). It is located between Beberbeck, about 4.5 km west-southwest of the ruins, and Gottsbüren (village east of Trendelburg), around 4.5 km north-northwest (each as the crow flies). The ruins stand on a relatively open basalt kuppe at an elevation of about 315 m above sea level (NHN). Southwest and below the castle is the Sababurg Wildlife Park, through which the little stream of Donnebach, an eastern and right-hand tributary of the Holzape, runs in a northwesterly direction. The ruins, village and wildlife park are an exclave of Hofgeismar, surrounded by the unparished area of Gutsbezirk Reinhardswald, in which the Urwald Sababurg lies on the other side of the park.