Övraby stone church was built around the year 1100 to the site of older church. There was also a Dominican monastery nearby in or around 1260. Halmstad moved in the 1320s to its present location and the old settlement came to be known as Övraby. The Swedish army’s ravages in the 1560s during the Northern Seven Years' War meant the end of “the upper village”. The church was burned to the ground and the site abandoned. The ruins were excavated by archaeologists in the 1930s.
The Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg is situated in a strategic area on a rocky spur overlooking the Upper Rhine Plain, it was used by successive powers from the Middle Ages until the Thirty Years' War when it was abandoned. From 1900 to 1908 it was rebuilt at the behest of the German kaiser Wilhelm II. Today it is a major tourist site, attracting more than 500,000 visitors a year.
The first records of a castle built by the Hohenstaufens date back to 1147. The fortress changed its name to Koenigsburg (royal castle) around 1157. The castle was handed over to the Tiersteins by the Habsburgs following its destruction in 1462. They rebuilt and enlarged it, installing a defensive system designed to withstand artillery fire.
The fortification work accomplished over the 15th century did not suffice to keep the Swedish artillery at bay during the Thirty Years War, and the defences were overrun.