Herbstenburg

Herbstenburg stands in the municipality of Dobbiaco, Italy, and began as a tower built during the medieval period.

The site was enlarged in 1500 when the brothers Kaspar and Christoph von Herbst adapted the medieval tower into the larger residence and administrative seat it is known as today. Kaspar von Herbst had served in imperial service from 1477, and Christoph von Herbst acted as judge of Toblach and used Herbstenburg as his courthouse. The estate served as the bailiwick seat and the centre for the Herbst family’s judicial functions. In 1508 Emperor Maximilian I made use of the building, convening the Diet of Augsburg there and attempting an attack on the castle of Botestagno. The emperor returned in 1511 and remained on the premises for several months while keeping his court there.

When the Herbst lineage died out in 1538, ownership transferred through a succession of families. Those named in the record include the Gössl of San Candido, Hans Karl von Frak (with some records naming Hans and Georg von Graben zum Stein and the Prak), and the von Walther family, which acquired the estate in 1605 and thereafter styled itself Walther von Herbstenburg. Later proprietors included the Laspa family and the Klebelsberg family, the latter appearing with a date of 1747 in one account. During the 18th to 20th centuries branches of the Bossi-Fedrigotti family, known as Belmonte and Ochsenfeld, held the property.

In 1906 numerous skeletons were discovered within the estate; following that discovery it was hypothesized that a flood had swept the internal prison spaces with water and rock. Shortly before the Second World War the property was purchased by the Countess Sayn-Wittgenstein, who left Herbstenburg to her nephews, the Barons Goldegg-Lindenburg. In 1960 Marchese Stefano Cavalcabò Misuracchi Fratta bought and carried out renovation work on the building, and he is recorded as the owner. In the summer of 2009 a statue of Emperor Maximilian I was unveiled on the square in front of the house.