Hochosterwitz Castle

Hochosterwitz Castle (German: Burg Hochosterwitz, Slovene: Grad Ostrovica) is a castle in Austria, considered one of Austria's most impressive medieval castles. It is on a 172-metre-high (564 ft) dolomite rock near Sankt Georgen am Längsee, east of the town of Sankt Veit an der Glan in Carinthia. The rock castle is one of the state's landmarks and a major tourist attraction.

Hochosterwitz is 664 metres (2,178 ft) above sea level on the rim of the historic Zollfeld plain north of Magdalensberg, about 7 km (4.3 mi) east of Sankt Veit. It can be seen from a distance of up to 30 km (19 mi) on a clear day.

A settlement site since the Bronze Age, the rock was first mentioned in an 860 deed issued by Louis the German, King of East Francia, donating several of his properties in the former principality of Carantania to the Archdiocese of Salzburg. It was then named Astarwiza. Celtic, Slavic, and Germanic origins have been suggested for the name. It remained a Salzburg possession, until in the 11th-century Archbishop Gebhard of Salzburg ceded the castle to the descendants of Count Siegfried of Sponheim in return for their support during the Investiture Controversy. After Siegfried's grandson Henry IV became Duke of Carinthia in 1122, the Sponheim rulers were able to shake off the Salzburg overlordship.

Later they bestowed the fiefdom upon the ministeriales of the Osterwitz noble family, possibly a cadet branch of the Sponheim dynasty. In 1209, one Herman of Osterwitz, who held the hereditary office of the cup-bearer at the ducal court in Sankt Veit, accompanied Duke Bernhard of Carinthia to the coronation of Emperor Otto IV in Rome.

In his book Change, the Austro-American psychologist Paul Watzlawick (1921–2007) tells a popular tale of the siege of the castle by the troops of Countess Margaret of Tyrol (Margarethe Maultasch). According to legend first noted by the medieval chronicler Jakob Unrest and later by Jacob Grimm, Margaret, cheated by the Austrian House of Habsburg of her inheritance claims to Carinthia upon her father's death in 1335, invaded the duchy; her forces were however deceived and withdrew when the garrison of Hochosterwitz slaughtered its last ox, filled it with grain, and threw it over the wall, pretending it still had so many provisions in stock that they could be used as projectiles.

Text adapted from “Hochosterwitz Castle” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Hochosterwitz Castle ranks #324 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #9 of the 200 mapped in Austria. Founded 860, it is older than 95% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 61 atlas entries founded in the 9th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 10,954 times in the last 60 days, more than 93% of the atlas. 18 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, 19 km away. See how Austria compares in the castle statistics.

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