In 1330, it was mortgaged to the Electoral Palatinate. It finally fell to the Dukes of Palatinate-Simmern and Zweibrücken in 1410 and decayed after the Thirty Years' War. Deserted and derelict, the ruin served as a stone quarry, as a result of which the late-Romanesque residential building almost completely disappeared and the outer bailey for the most part. From about 1840, the Wittelsbach kings of Bavaria had the castle rebuilt. After Ludwig I of Bavaria had reconstruction plans prepared by his court architect August von Voit already in 1851, Georg von Schacky made a reconstruction drawing in 1881 and the Trifels Association (founded in 1860) had carried out structural measures in 1882, in particular the erection of the great well arch, the Munich architect Rudolf Esterer designed a monumental rebuilding project following the model of south Italian Hohenstaufen castles, initiated by the Trifels Association and born by the cultural-political ideology of the Nazi epoch. The Nazi era reconstruction in 1938-1942 and later reconstructions in 1946-1959 (residential building), 1960 (1st castellan's house), 1963-1966 (heightening of the keep), 1972-1978 (safeguarding and enclosing wall) and 1988-1989 (2nd castellan's house) utilized in part the preserved walls from the Middle Ages or those found by archaeological investigations in 1935-1937, but also in many cases rigorously ignored the original medieval findings and created essentially an architectural reinterpretation of the 20th century. The present-day castle is in large parts not true to the medieæval original. It is characterized by a large well tower outside the ring wall, linked to the castle by a bridge. The surrounding rocky landscape is a popular venue for mountaineers.