From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The Rudelsburg is a ruined hill castle located on the east bank of the river Saale above Saaleck, a village in the borough of Naumburg in the county of Burgenlandkreis in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The Rudelsburg was built in the Middle Ages by the Bishop of Naumburg and served to secure trade routes such as the Via Regia through the Saale Valley. The Rudelsburg was a point of conflict between the bishops of Naumburg and the Margraves of Meissen belonging to the House of Wettin. The castle occasionally served various noble families as a residence, until it was destroyed in the Thirty Years' War and thereafter fell into disrepair. In the early 19th century the Rudelsburg became a popular tourist destination thanks to the romanticisation of mountains and the rise of hiking as a pastime. From 1855 onwards it achieved national renown as the annual meeting place of the Kösener Senioren-Convents-Verband, the oldest union of student fraternities with delegates from all German-speaking countries. The Rudelsburg still maintains a particular attraction for visitors and lies on the Romanesque Road (Ger:Straße der Romanik), a tourist route. Saaleck is a village in the former municipality of Bad Kösen, since 2010 part of the town of Naumburg in the district of Burgenlandkreis in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. The castles Saaleck and Rudelsburg next to the village have been proposed by Germany for inscription in the List of World Heritage. The World Heritage nomination Naumburg Cathedral and the High Medieval Cultural Landscape of the Rivers Saale and Unstrut is representative for the processes that shaped the continent during the High Middle Ages between 1000 and 1300: Christianization, the so-called “Landesausbau” and the dynamics of cultural exchange and transfer characteristic for this very period.