Wartenberg Ruins

Sunday December 16, 2007
On our numerous trips to Ikea we had seen an old stone tower up on top of a hill overlooking the town of Muttenz, and thought it would be fun to go see it sometime if we could figure out how to get up there. Today I figured we'd take the number 14 tram out to Muttenz-Dorf and see if we could find the way.

When we got off the tram at Muttenz, we realized they were holding their Weinachtsmarkt. It was cold enough that we considered just browsing through the booths there and heading home, but the thought of exploring the ruins kept us going. We decided that if it was still going on when we got back down we'd stop and have some glühwein to warm up.

The little yellow wanderweg (hiking trail) signs had Wartenberg Ruin listed, which sounded promising, so we followed them up the very steep hill to the top. When we got there I was not too badly tired out, amazingly enough. All the walking we've been doing seems to be getting me into better shape, yay! We had seen on the map at the bottom of the hill that there were actually three different ruins. Vorhere Ruin, Mittlere Ruin and Hintere Ruin (something like forward or front ruin, middle ruin and back ruin).

We started at the front ruin, and that turned out to be the most interesting one. It had the most complicated layout of the three. The other two were basically just towers. They had all been at least partially reconstructed at various times over the years, ranging from the 1930s through the 1990s. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any information about them, even online.

There were what looked like 'bunkers' or pillboxes interspersed between the ruins. I'm no expert, but they were possibly from circa WWII, and were full of leaves to about neck height so we didn't attempt to go in them. We also discovered a bomb shelter type construction that had been included underneath part of the front ruin, possibly during one of the reconstructions. It was filled with graffiti, which seems to be a big problem around here. Thankfully the top part of the ruins were not too terribly defaced.

This is a view of the interior of the front ruin, there were a number of windows and half walls scattered throughout, but it was hard to tell if anyone had ever lived there or if it was built only as a fortification and watch 'tower.' It certainly had an outstanding view of the surrounding countryside.

On the trek from the front ruin to the middle ruin we saw an area that had been dug out of the hillside. This had most likely been used as the quarry for building the original fortifications, as there were still some big blocks lying in a pile along one side.

The middle ruin was a big square watch tower that had originally had at least 3 floors, judging from the holes where the floor joists had been. Stairs and a platform around the outside had been put up at some point so you could go to the top. This is the tower that is visible from the tram and had peaked our interest. There was a wooden bridge across a big ditch leading to the doorway. A wrought iron gate had been put in, probably when it was restored, and this was propped mostly open. There were hanging ferns growing in the corners from the second floor , and one of the windows had a decorative grate that was an interesting contrast to the rest of the rather utilitarian construction.


More windows in the middle ruin, one with a view of the town of Muttenz, you can see the church tower in the top middle. The church was also very well fortified, which is a bit unusual for the area. We kept hearing wafts of Christmas music from the town as we wandered the ruins.

The back ruin was a round tower with incredibly thick walls and funny little skewed holes to help light the interior. There were wooden stairs spiraling up to the top, and it was very dark inside, so those little holes did not do a very good job letting light in. Of course, the walls were about two feet thick, so they were really too small to do much.

There was a courtyard on the far side of this tower surrounded by half fallen rock walls. A fire pit had been set up here, and had obviously been used for picnics. Unfortunately I couldn't get a very good shot of it because there was litter scattered quite liberally around.




This is the view looking out towards Basel from the top of the last tower, and the other is looking out over the back of the hill. Quite a contrast. The built up areas are very crowded, houses and industry packed in side by side. It is nice that they make an effort to keep some of it as fields and forests.

Since the sun was starting to set and we had explored all three of the ruins, we headed back down the hill to look over the rest of the Weinachtsmarkt. We did stop and treat ourselves to a cup of glühwein (the stuff we had in the Barfusserplatz Weinachtsmarkt was more flavorful, this tasted a bit watered down), and shared a vanille-erdbeeren stange (vanilla strawberry pastry) that was delicious. It probably helped that we had worked up quite an appetite from hiking up that hill...unfortunately, my batteries needed charging so I didn't get any photographs of the fortified church or the Weinachtsmarkt.