Cross Castle

East view of Kreuzen Castle (2009)

Widmann coat of arms

Castle Kreuzen is located on the road to Windischen Höhe in the Kreuzen , a village and cadastral municipality in the market town of Paternion .

history

Kreuzen was the center of silver, lead and iron mining in the area between the Drava and Gail. The castle building was erected as a caretaker's house in the first half of the 16th century and expanded into a hunting lodge by the Khevenhüllers in 1591 . Bear hunting was still very attractive in the area even centuries later. The lordly caretaker Johann Heinrich Ainether from and to Aineth of the Paternion rulership reports in his notes on the [= his] hunting route for the period from 1710 to 1734 of around 25 bears and 6 wolves that were shot or shot. There was a hammer mill next to the castle. In 1610 Barthelmä Khevenhüller was one of the first in Europe to start manufacturing tinplate . After the eviction of the Protestant Khevenhüller in the course of the Counter Reformation , the property came into the possession of the Widmann family. Today the castle belongs to the Widmann-Foscari-Rezzonico family.

Building description

The stately two-storey building of the Renaissance is built on a rectangular floor plan and equipped with round towers with curved conical roofs on the southeast and southwest corners. The painted coat of arms of the Widmann as Counts of Ortenburg can be seen on the south- west tower, and a sundial on the south-east tower. On the west facade the building has one, on the east facade two biforic windows made of reddish limestone with an Ionic central column and side pilasters, sills and profiled cornices as a finishing touch. The hipped roof is covered with wooden shingles.

On the ground floor there is a two-aisled, six-bay hall supported by two mighty round pillars and half-octagonal wall pillars. The middle room on the first floor has a wooden beam ceiling resting on two Tuscan granite columns. From this hall, three vaulted rooms each to the north and south are accessed, one room with ribbed vaults.

literature

Dehio manual. The art monuments of Austria. Carinthia. Anton Schroll, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-7031-0712-X , p. 430.
Alexander Hanisch-Wolfram: In the footsteps of the Protestants in Carinthia. Verlag Johannes Heyn, Klagenfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-7084-0392-2 , p. 170.
Georg Clam Martinic: Castles & Palaces in Austria. Landesverlag im Veritas Verlag, Linz 1991, ISBN 3-85001-679-X , p. 57 f.