- Type
- Castle
- Location
- Burgenland, Austria
- Style
- Gothic architecture
- Coordinates
- 47.4070°, 16.2522°
History
The castle on a ridge above the Pinka valley appears in records from the 13th century; from 1199 it lay within Hungary, and in 1236 King Béla IV captured it. It later passed through the hands of the lords of Kőszeg and the Kanizsai family, and in 1487 Emperor Frederick III granted it to Hans von Königsberg. The castle held out against the Ottomans in 1529 and 1532, after which it was given a ring of bastions, and in 1604 it beat off a siege of several weeks by the forces of Stephen Bocskai. After the powder store exploded in 1617, the Gothic interior was rebuilt in Baroque style. Count Ádám Batthyány bought the castle in 1644; in 1864 one of his descendants sold it to his steward Edward O'Egan, whose heirs sold it to Eduard von Almásy in 1892. The present owners descend from Maria della Pace Kuefstein, adopted in 1955 by the last Almásy lord of the castle, and add that name to their own.
What to see
From the road you see massive walls and bastions on a wooded hill above the small town of Bernstein, the highest castle in Burgenland. Since 1953 part of the castle has been a hotel with a restaurant, where guests sleep in historic rooms and dine in a knights' hall with Baroque stuccowork from the first half of the 17th century. The alchemist's kitchen and the 16th-century torture chamber, with museum exhibits, can also be visited. Visitors are also drawn to the local craft of green serpentine, a stone quarried in the area for a long time.
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