Reimagining a 700-year-old Swiss castle with DALL-E

I first spotted Neu-Falkenstein Castle a few years ago while driving the road towards Waldenburg. You come around a bend and there it is, sitting on a cliff as if it has been waiting for someone to notice. A proper ruin. Stark, pale stone clinging to the ridge. It caught my eye and stayed with me.

A lockdown adventure

The first time I actually climbed up was during the lockdown in May 2020. I was on paternity leave with our son, and my three-year-old daughter and I were doing daily little excursions to explore the area. Somewhere outdoors, somewhere with a bit of space. We packed a few things, drove forty minutes and wandered up through the forest until we reached the ruins and the fire pits tucked into the walls. We made a small fire, cooked sausages and sat there in the quiet. It felt like a tiny adventure in the middle of a very strange year.

We have been back a few times since and it has become one of our regular walks. A small family ritual. I love taking the kids up to these old ruins in the Jura. There are loads of them if you know where to look. All perched on ridges or hidden in the folds of the valley. Neu-Falkenstein is the one I always return to. The ridge, the view, the atmosphere. It has something about it.

A brief history on the ridge

The castle itself has a proper story. According to the signs up there, it was probably built in the early 1100s and became the seat of the Counts of Falkenstein and Bechburg in the thirteenth century. In 1374 it found itself in the middle of the so-called “Saffron War”, when mercenaries seized saffron belonging to Basel merchants. The castle was attacked and eventually captured. Over the centuries the place changed hands several times. By the time of the Helvetic Revolution in 1798 it was burned and left to decay. What you see today is whatever two hundred years of weathering have decided to leave behind.

That is part of the fascination. When you are up there it is hard not to wonder what it actually looked like in its prime. The rooflines, the keep, the outer walls. The whole thing standing proud on the ridge. So for this post I decided to try to recreate it. Not as a fantasy, but as a grounded interpretation of what might have stood there in the late thirteenth century. I used DALL-E to help visualise it, guided by what remains of the walls, the topography and what historians believe was typical for castles in this region.

The limits of recreating history with GenAI

I should also say a quick word about the limits of this sort of reconstruction. GenAI can be a useful tool for imagining the past, but it is not a historian and it does not always follow the rules. It guesses, it fills gaps and it gets carried away with neat rooflines or perfectly trimmed stonework unless you rein it in. What you see here is a best attempt, shaped by the actual ridge, the real ruins and a bit of patience, rather than a claim to absolute accuracy.

Even so, it does bring the place to life again. Seeing the aerial view, the approach to the gate and the courtyard gives you a sense of scale. You can imagine how people lived there and what it might have felt like to stand on that ridge with the valley stretching out below.

If you have never been, it is worth the walk. Take good shoes. Bring a snack. Light a fire in the fire pits if you fancy it. The path is steep in places but the view rewards you. And for me, walking up there with the kids, hearing them explore the ruins and ask questions, it has become one of those simple little joys. A place that ties the present to the past without any fuss.