Burg Friberg (Siat)

Burg Friberg (Siat) stands above the village of Siat in Switzerland and was built and held by the medieval Lords of Friberg, a free noble family of the Vorderrheintal.

The castle served as the center of the Friberg lordship during the high Middle Ages. A named member of the family, Friedrich von Friberg, is recorded between 1255 and 1289; in 1255 he fought at Domat/Ems alongside other Rhaetian lords against the Prince-Bishopric of Chur. The Friberg line appears to have ended around 1330, after which the ownership record becomes uncertain.

A man called Rainger is listed as dead in 1343; the records indicate he conveyed the lordship to the Austrian authorities and then held it back as a fief. After the extinction of the direct Friberg line, one account shows the castle granted to Donat von Vaz and passing on his death, about 1337, to his daughter Ursula and her husband Rudolf von Werdenberg. Another account records that Donat pressed a claim, and that Ursula renounced ownership in 1342 only to receive the holding again from Austria as a fief.

A feud with the Rhäzünser culminated in 1343, when Ursula and her husband gave up Burg Friberg and nearby Jörgenberg; both fortresses then came into Rhäzünser possession in that year. In 1458 an inheritance dispute between Georg von Rhäzüns and Jos Niclaus von Zollern resulted in Jos Niclaus acquiring the lordships of Friberg and Jörgenberg together with the villages Waltensburg, Andiast, Siat, Rueun and Schlans. A contract dated 1 June 1472 concerning the two lordships was registered with Bishop Ortlieb of Chur, and on 6 June 1472 Jos Niclaus sold the castles to the monastery of Disentis. The castle was probably abandoned during the fifteenth century.