Solavers Castle

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Solavers Castle
Solavers Castle Hill from the south

Solavers Castle Hill from the south

Creation time : 11th century
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: ruin
Place: Seewis
Geographical location 46 ° 59 '0.2 "  N , 9 ° 38' 39.2"  E Coordinates: 46 ° 59 '0.2 "  N , 9 ° 38' 39.2"  E ; CH1903:  767 779  /  205 948
Height: 736  m above sea level M.
Solavers Castle (Canton of Graubünden)
Solavers Castle

The ruins of Solavers Castle are located in the municipality of Seewis at the beginning of the Prättigau in the Swiss canton of Graubünden .

location

The ruins of the former church fort of Solavers are at 1058  m above sea level. M. just above Seewis-Schmitten and Grüsch on a rock head.

investment

The most impressive remnant of the hilltop castle complex is the 57 meter long wall that stretched over the entire hilltop and secured the castle from the north. Near the gate, where an attack had to be particularly violent, the wall is 1.6 meters thick, at the highest point it is only 60 centimeters thick. Wall joints show that the wall has been expanded and raised several times. Two walled openings at a height of several meters presumably led to wooden bay windows that were used for defense.

From the bottom of the northern incision, the path leads up to today's wide gate, the trimmings of which have been removed. The gate was added later; presumably to enable a more comfortable connection to the feudal living area. The original and now walled-up entrance was about 15 meters further east in a less easily accessible place. The wall was provided with a wooden battlement that descended like a staircase towards the west.

Immediately behind the wall on the highest point of the hill was a church consecrated to the Virgin Mary , the oldest part of which, the nave , dates back to Romanesque times. The angular choir with its Gothic windows dates from the 15th century.

The feudal buildings stood in the lower south of the complex. Small traces of a square tower with a side length of around 12 meters, wall parts of a residential wing with a pointed arch window and a 21-meter-long remnant of the south wall are barely visible. There are only sparse remains of a curtain wall that surrounded the entire plateau.

history

Solavers on a drawing by JU Fitzi, around 1850

Written documents about the development of Solavers Castle did not start until the 14th century. When the church was built in the early Middle Ages, its patronage of the Virgin Mary and its function as mother church come from Seewis and Fanas.

When and by whom the church fort was converted into a feudal castle cannot be said with certainty. In any case, in the 13th century the castle came into the possession of Ulrich von Aspermont , under whom it became a dominant center in the lower Prättigau. The Prättigau legacy and thus the complex of Solavers that of Aspermont came in 1344 when property was distributed to the Counts of Toggenburg , who occasionally stayed in the castle. The last Toggenburg Friedrich VII is said to have been born in the castle around 1370. In the same year the Marienkirche is mentioned for the first time by Solavers.

After the death of the last Toggenburg resident, Friedrich VII. In 1436, Solavers came to Wilhelm von Montfort-Tettnang and Heinrich von Sax-Misox after various inheritance disputes . After several changes of ownership, Count Hugo von Werdenberg sold Solavers to Sigmund von Austria : ... misampt the closed Pellfort , Strassberg and other castles ...

After the Prättigau converted to the Reformed faith, the Church of Our Lady of Solavers was probably given up.

The church, on the other hand, remained in operation until the end of the Middle Ages and appears again in the documents in 1487. However, it only appears as a branch church of the more easily accessible new church of Seewis.

  • gallery

  • Shield wall from the north with the walled-up former gate

  • Shield wall from the inside

  • Entrance gate from the north

  • Church from the south

  • Entrance to the church

  • Interior of the church interior

  • Gothic church window

  • Gate in the south wall

literature

  • Fritz Hauswirth: Castles and palaces in Switzerland. Volume 8 . Neptun Publishing House. Kreuzlingen, 1972
  • Otto P. Clavadetscher, Werner Meyer : The castle book of Graubünden . Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-280-01319-4
  • Werner Meyer: Castles of Switzerland. Volume 3 . Silva publishing house. Zurich, 1983
  • Anton von Castelmur: The castles and palaces of the Canton of Graubünden , Volume I, Birkhäuser-Verlag, Basel 1940

Web links

Commons : Burg Solavers  - Collection of images, videos and audio files