The landmark of the district town of Mindelheim in the Lower Allgäu has one more attraction. During work for the upcoming general renovation of the Mindelburg, a previously unknown, almost 900-year-old passage between two floors was discovered. As Mindelheim’s head of cultural affairs, Christian Schedler, explained, the corridor dates back to the time when the castle was built around 1150. At that time it was an official entrance. The corridor was later walled up when the castle was rebuilt. “There hasn’t been anyone in the corridor for centuries,” said Schedler.
The castle is to be converted into a museum over the next five years. The inside of the complex was no longer open to the public for more than 70 years because a company had rented the Mindelburg since the late 1940s. However, this publisher has now moved out, and now the Mindelburg is to be renovated and scientifically documented. That’s why the castle was statically examined, explained Schedler.
For this purpose, the director of the future castle museum, Markus Fischer, had the floor opened up in a magnificent apartment on the first floor. A large cavity was discovered. “It’s a corridor about seven meters long that led up from the ground floor to the first floor,” said Schedler. With a width of 75 centimeters and a height of 2.30 meters, it was a considerable corridor between the floors for the time. “Staircases only came about much later.” The head of the cultural office assumes that there were several such corridors in the building at the time. “The fact that we found it is pure coincidence.” He does not rule out that further discoveries will follow.
In other medieval castles, too, it occasionally happens that forgotten corridors come to light again during renovations. According to Schedler, the Tower of London is a prominent example of what used to be the usual walkways from one floor to the other. The corridors there are still fully functional today.