The stage sits inside the ruin of the Clingenburg, a Hohenstaufen hill castle of about 1160 standing some forty metres above Klingenberg am Main. Open-air playing there goes back to the Andreas-Hofer-Festspiele of 1926 and the Wilhelm-Tell-Festspiele of 1928; an association formed in 1993 and from 1994 ran professional summer seasons from June to August, two to four productions a year drawing between 28,000 and 40,000 visitors. The association went bankrupt in August 2019 and the Festspiele have not returned.