Burgruine Rothenthurn

Burgruine Rothenthurn in Rothenthurn, Austria, is a medieval castle complex that began around the 11th century and developed through the late Middle Ages with important Renaissance-era rebuilding in the early 1500s. Built and altered by successive local noble households, the site occupied a commanding position on a narrow plateau above the Drava valley and near Millstätter See, serving as a local seat of feudal authority over the centuries.

The location takes its name from an early “red tower,” a standing structure noted from the site’s origins. A castle is explicitly mentioned in records by 1478. During the later medieval period the holding belonged to a succession of regional powers: the Counts of Ortenburg, then the Counts of Cilli (Celje), and the Counts of Gorizia–Tyrol. From about 1450 the Kreuzer family held the place as a princely fief.

In 1508 Johann Meixner appears as lord and is associated with the large-scale alterations that produced much of the castle fabric seen today. Around 1525 his daughter Barbara dedicated a private chapel to Saint Barbara. About the same time the property passed by marriage to Christoph Khevenhüller of Aichelburg, and in the mid-1500s the Khevenhüllers entrusted day-to-day management to their steward Ehrenholdt Eschey.

Subsequent owners included Hans von Gschrey, who acquired the site in 1564, and Franz Balthasar von Eschey, who bought it in 1570. The chapel was reworked in 1644. Ownership later passed to Maria Salome, Baroness von Aichelburg, in 1662 and to Baron Georg Sigmund von Mandorff in 1688. Johann Heinrich von Eineter was active at the castle in 1726, and the property returned to the Mandorff family in 1738. The Münch‑Bellinghaus and Sorgo families were later proprietors. Count Konstantin Normann von Ehrenfels acquired the estate in 1880; in 1882 the façades were transformed in a historicizing restoration and a grave monument for Count Konstantin Normann‑Ehrenfels was erected north of the castle.

The chapel received new decorative work and an altar during the early 18th century, with the altar dated 1710 and mural decoration assigned either to 1726 or to 1737, the latter coinciding with Matthias Ferdinand Eineter’s period of activity. The complex remains in private hands and is operated today as a lodging establishment by the Pereira‑Arnstein family. The building is protected as a listed monument of the Republic of Austria, protection number 34727.