Castles of the Teutonic Knights in the Crusader Holy Land

The Order of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem — better known as the Teutonic Knights — was founded in 1190 during the Third Crusade as a hospital service for German pilgrims at the siege of Acre. Younger and smaller than the Hospitallers or Templars, the order acquired full military status in 1198 and over the next century established a network of castles and fortified estates in the Latin East before pivoting north to lead the Baltic crusades.

This page catalogues every Crusader-era site in the atlas with a documented Teutonic Knights affiliation. The order's most famous holding was Montfort — Starkenberg in German — a steep clifftop fortress hidden in the Western Galilee that served as Teutonic Knights' headquarters in the Holy Land from 1220 until its siege and surrender to Sultan Baybars in 1271. The order also held urban quarters in Acre and a number of smaller estates. After the Mamluk reconquest, the Teutonic Order survived by transplanting itself wholesale to the Baltic frontier, where its activity over the next centuries dwarfed anything it had achieved in the Holy Land.