Kos Manor

About

The Kos Manor (Slovene: Kosova graščina) is a 16th-century manor house in the Murova neighborhood of Jesenice, Slovenia, at the street address of Cesta maršala Tita 64. It is one of four so-called "ironworks castles" built in the area during the 16th and early 17th centuries by owners of local iron-mining and -processing facilities, in what were then the clustered settlements of Plavž, Sava, Murova and Javornik, amalgamated into the town of Jesenice in 1929. The Bucellini-Ruard Manor in Sava is another survivor of the original four; the Plavž and Javornik manors have been torn down.

The Kos manor was built in 1521 by Sigismund (Žiga) of Dietrichstein, a leaseholder of the Bucelleni family, owners of the Sava ironworks. It is located in what was then the heart of the Murova settlement, at the foot of the path leading to the Church of St. Leonard atop a small hill a few hundred metres away.

In period documents, the manor is mentioned as the "old belopeš castle," in reference to the ancestral home of its builders, the Bucelleni family, the village of Bela Peč ("White Furnace," Italian: Fusine), between Rateče and Tarvisio in present-day Italy. It was also described in Valvasor's 1689 survey...