Heinsberg

Heinsberg's castle and collegiate church of St Gangolf occupied a divided hill above the town, an unusually commanding position in the Lower Rhine lowlands. The extinction of its ruling dynasty in the fifteenth century changed the castle from a noble residence into the headquarters of a ducal bailiff. In 1484 the lordship passed into the territory of the Duke of Jülich.

From 1538 the duke rebuilt the hilltop defences as a citadel with a powder tower and casemates, adapting an older seat of lordship to artillery warfare. French troops dismantled the fortifications in 1678, leaving a very different landscape of ruined walls around the castle and church. Political boundaries changed again in the revolutionary and Napoleonic era: French administration began in 1794, Prussian rule followed in 1815, and a Heinsberg district was established in 1816. The town thus carried an old seigneurial centre through several successive forms of territorial government.