Excavators at Otto the Great’s Palace Site in Helfta Find a New Stone Building, a Terrace and Craft Workshops

Archaeologists digging at Helfta, near Lutherstadt Eisleben in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, have uncovered new buildings beside the royal palace linked to Otto the Great (AD 912-973). The State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt (LDA) released the findings. Professor Felix Biermann leads the work with about 20 volunteers, and the 2026 campaign runs until 24 October.

A new stone building with a cellar

The team found a previously unknown 10th-century stone building next to the palatium, or royal palace. It measures about 9 by 5 metres and has a cellar with a well-preserved access staircase. Its function remains unknown. Archaeologists suggest it housed either members of the king’s entourage or a burgrave, an official who ran the palace while the king was away. Its date rests on associated finds.

A terrace and an everyday settlement

A stone-reinforced terrace on the palace’s eastern side dates to the same period. The team suggests it may have hosted open-air assemblies. Around the palace, the dig also found rectangular sunken-featured buildings about 3 to 5 metres across, with stone-lined hearths. Clay loom weights, casting crucibles and a lime kiln point to textile production, non-ferrous metalworking and lime manufacture.

Finds and later layers

Finds include silver coins from the 10th to 15th centuries, Ottonian earrings and enamelled garment clasps, iron arrowheads, pottery with Slavic wave patterns, a bone flute and an antler box fragment with circular eye motifs dated to about AD 1000. The site also holds the remains of a 12th-century fortified castle of the von Hackeborn family, with an oval moated enclosure about 50 metres across. The article links it possibly to Gertrud and Mechthild von Hackeborn, who were connected with the Cistercian monastery of Helfta.

Background

The palace was already known. Earlier excavations from 2020 to 2023 found St Radegund’s Church, founded before AD 969, and palace foundations. Visitors reportedly included Otto the Great, Otto II and the chronicler Thietmar of Merseburg. The site grew from a fortified settlement called Helphideburc, which a ninth-century Hersfeld tithe register mentions. The Saxony-Anhalt state funds the work through the REVIER 2038 structural development programme.

What is still open

These findings come from an ongoing excavation and a press release, not a peer-reviewed publication. The terrace’s use and the castle’s link to the von Hackeborn family remain interpretations.