Discover Heroldsbach: Thurn Castle, cultural trail and pilgrimage site

Heroldsbach brings together very different travel interests: Thurn Castle Adventure Park is all about rides and animals, the Cultural and Historical Hiking Trail highlights the area’s cultural history, and the pilgrimage site invites visitors to pray, reflect and enjoy the quiet. When planning your trip, it makes sense to first decide which of these will be the focus of your stay. This also lets you tailor your search for accommodation in Heroldsbach to what you would like to experience while you are there.

Thurn Castle: rides and a natural-history detail

Thurn Castle Adventure Park offers more than 50 rides. These include a Western show, a suspended monorail, a VR roller coaster and a free-fall tower. There is also a large playground and a wide variety of animal species. This range gives you concrete options to consider together when planning: you can weigh up whether rides, a show, animals or the playground are of particular interest to your group.

A quieter side of Thurn Castle’s natural history can be seen in its roof, where more than 300 bats have lived for many years. This glimpse of wildlife adds an unusual detail at the castle itself to the many animal species at the adventure park.

Thurn Castle is accessible via the A73 and by public transport. Thurn Castle Adventure Park is closed in winter. Check the exact seasonal dates before travelling if you are planning a visit to the park.

Cultural history and pilgrimage site

The Cultural and Historical Hiking Trail in Heroldsbach opened on 1 May 2007 to mark the town’s 1,000th anniversary. A brochure with explanations of the 27 stops is available to download. You can use the explanations while planning your trip to learn about the trail’s stops.

The Heroldsbach pilgrimage site includes a chapel, a pilgrims’ hostel and places of grace. It invites visitors to pray, reflect and enjoy the quiet. This offers a different focus from the rides and attractions at the park. If you are taking different interests into account when planning your trip, you can deliberately pair this quieter, spiritual element with leisure activities and cultural history.

The history of the apparitions in Heroldsbach also includes the number of pilgrims at the time: in the early years, 50,000 to 70,000 people came to the “Holy Mountain” in Heroldsbach on certain major feast days. This figure refers to those feast days during the historical early period, not to visitor numbers today.

In the wider destination of Forchheim

If you would like to include Forchheim as a wider part of your trip, its cultural hiking trail offers a different perspective on cultural projects: the Cultural Experience Franconian Switzerland hiking trail links pioneering cultural projects across Forchheim district over more than 280 km. The route is therefore a distinct point of interest within the wider destination of Forchheim; it is not the Cultural and Historical Hiking Trail in Heroldsbach.

Wiesenthau Castle is also part of the wider destination of Forchheim. It is privately owned, used as a dining venue and can be visited by arrangement. Arrange a visit before your trip.

When choosing accommodation, it helps to start by considering your main focus: should Heroldsbach, with its leisure activities, cultural history or pilgrimage site, shape your stay, or would you also like to include Forchheim in your plans? These themes are quite different, but you do not have to limit your trip to just one type of experience. You can tailor your search for accommodation to the destinations whose cultural and leisure offerings matter most to you.

More destinations

Discover more destinations: Pretzfeld, Unterleinleiter, Pinzberg, Gosberg, Weißenohe, Langensendelbach, Wiesenttal, Forchheim.

To the wider travel overview: Forchheim.