It has been in large part rebuilt since a fire in , and possesses a castle, with various collections, a museum of antiquities, an old town hall and churches. There are pine-needle baths and a psychiatric hospital. Gardening is a speciality. The nearby ridge of rocks called the Teufelsmauer Devils Wall offers views across the plain and into the deep gorges of the Harz. The town of Blankenburg Harz lies on the northern edge of the Harz mountains at a height of about metres.
It is located west of Quedlinburg , south of Halberstadt and east of Wernigerode. The stream known as the Goldbach flows through the district of Oesig northwest of the town centre. The first traces of settlement date to the Old Stone Age , but the first recorded mention of Blankenburg goes back to The Saxon duke, Lothair of Supplinburg , installed Poppo, a nephew of Bishop Reinhard of Halberstadt , as count at the castle, which stood on a bare limestone rock on the site of the present castle.
The name of the town derives from this castle. His descendants were also subject to the nearby Regenstein Castle. This was a fief from the Bishopric of Halberstadt like the County of Blankenburg, also called the Hartingau. In Blankenburg suffered heavy destruction again. Nine cannonballs embedded in the walls of the town hall evince this difficult time.
Rudolf was given Blankenburg in as a paragium. The present-day Little Castle with its terraced garden and baroque pleasure garden stems from that period. From to Blankenburg belonged to the Kingdom of Westphalia. In the Seven Years' War the absolute neutrality of the town made it a safe refuge for the Brunswick court. In the early days of Nazi era , those who opposed the Nazi regime were persecuted and murdered.
In a notorious campaign by Brunswick SS commander, Jeckeln, in September , communists and social democrats were herded together in the inn, Zur Erholung. Here and in the Blankenburger Hof they were severely beaten, some dying as a result. Here some prisoners had to carry out forced labour in the monastery factory and Oda Works.
