The ruins of Hohenurach Castle rise above the town of Urach on a 2,270 ft (692 m) high mountain peak. They go back to the castle probably founded by the counts of Urach in the 12th century. Between 1254 and 1265 holdings of the Urach noble family fell to the Württemberg dynasty. Duke Ulrich and Duke Christoph von Württemberg made the decision to have the mountain castle expanded to a major fortress complex beginning in 1538. After it increasingly lost its military importance from the middle of the 17the century, the fortress still served as a state prison for many years in which the likes of Nicodemus Frischlin and Wilhelmine von Grävenitz served sentences.
The Brühl river plummets from a height of more than 120 feet (37 meters) over a calc-tuffa wall. The water originates from seepage points at the edge of the town Würtingen, located 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away. It takes approx. 28 hours to reach the waterfall, and dissolves so much lime in this time that many cubic yards of tuff (approx. 6.5 cubic yards/5 cubic meters per year) form on the Urach Waterfall. The Urach Waterfall once flowed into the valley in many separate streams and cascades. It has now been tamed to a single waterfall by human intervention.
The 2,333 foot (711 meter) high "Runder Berg" (Round Mountain) was settled by human beings for three thousand years. Above all in the 4th and 5th century AD it served as the seat of Alemannic nobility. Proof of these settlements in the form of pottery and precious metal objects was first found in the last third of the 20th century. Around 600 AD the settlement was destroyed by the Franconians.
Another waterfall flows in Güterstein Valley west of the town of Urach. A monastery once founded by the counts of Urach on a high calc-tuffa terrace was initially inhabited by Cistercians, and from 1439 on by Carthusians. In the period during which the earldom was divided (1442-1482), it serve the Urach line of Württemberg counts as a tomb. Following the Reformation the monastery was closed and the stones used for construction at Hohenneuffen and Hohenurach.