Aichelberg Castle

About

Aichelberg Castle (German: Burgruine Aichelberg) is a castle in Carinthia, Austria. It crowns an 850 m spur in the Ossiacher Tauern, north-east of Wernberg, from which it once commanded the pre-alpine trade roads that linked the Drava valley with the interior of Carinthia. Although the masonry suggests an earlier fortification, the seat enters the written record in 1224 with the tournament knight Reinher de Eychelberc, whose family took its name from the site and served as ministeriales of the Carinthian dukes during the later thirteenth century.

When the male Aichelberg line failed, Duke Ernest pledged the stronghold to Hans Khevenhüller in 1431; four years later the fief was converted into full freehold, making Aichelberg the first allodial residence of that rising dynasty. Most of the standing masonry dates to the turbulent decades around 1500. The original late-Romanesque core was badly damaged in 1484 during Emperor Frederick III's war with King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, and the Khevenhüller family rebuilt the complex as a compact, artillery-resistant residence with large rectangular windows and a newly vaulted palas.

Contemporary accounts also record the demolition of the...