The castle was built around 1160 - probably on orders from Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa - by the imperial ministerial official Kuno I von Hagen-Arnsburg. The counts of Münzenberg played a key political role in the Holy Roman Empire, a status they sought to demonstrate with sophisticated architecture. The powerful, hammer-dressed ashlar blocks of the curtain wall and the representative residential apartments were intended as tokens of the counts´power and their proximity to the emperor. But the Castle complex in this phase was never completed. The residential building (called Pallas) remained unplastered, the curtain wall was built along just three sides of the castle and of the second keep only the base was finished.
