Waldburg

Waldburg lies in Upper Swabia beneath the hilltop castle from which the noble house of Waldburg took its name. Its steep height made the castle a prominent defensive site overlooking the surrounding country. The family's early stronghold was rebuilt in the thirteenth century; under Emperor Frederick II it held the imperial regalia from 1220 until at least 1240. The church of Saint Magnus was built at the foot of the hill in 1327.

The family held lands and offices within the Holy Roman Empire, and the office of imperial hereditary steward became attached to the house in 1526. In the middle of the sixteenth century, Steward Georg IV transformed the castle into a more palatial residence. From the seventeenth century the family occupied it only intermittently and building activity diminished, although the castle remained associated with its ancestral house.