Schloss Katzenberg

The complex occupies a raised river terrace formed in the Quaternary period and retains the layout of a fortified site that was later adapted for residential use. Excavated outer and inner ditches surround the core, and earth from those excavations was heaped to form a berm that supported a high defensive wall. A continuous defensive wall-walk, running along the inner face of that wall, once gave guards a protected route around the enclosure. The inner stronghold is defined by a high circular, or ring, wall that served as the main line of defense.

The principal entrance was originally protected by a square gate tower, and a matching tower faced the river. Both front towers were removed in later alterations; at the place of the former forward tower builders inserted a transverse wall and created the present gateway. The large surviving gate tower still carries a wooden cap and displays a Gothic coat-of-arms relief dating from the early 1500s, while a stone figure of the Virgin Mary on the tower’s courtyard side dates to the mid-1600s.

Residential expansion is visible where living wings were built against the old ring wall, necessitating the cutting of windows through the thick defensive masonry. The inner ditch was partly transformed into a landscaped park and partly retained in its older form, so visitors encounter both parkland and original earthworks. Buildings that face the inner courtyard have galleries and arcades that open onto the court.

Interior rooms of the palace preserve features from the 17th and early 18th centuries. The great hall, the former library, and the chapel survive and contain period decoration: a stucco ceiling dated 1680, stucco ornament and portals in the chapel likely produced by workshop hands of the late 17th century, fresco work executed around 1690, and stucco in the knights’ hall dated 1676. The chapel’s altarpiece shows Saint Sebastian and was painted in 1731 by Paul Erlmiller of Braunau. On the ground floor a bookbinding museum displays richly decorated Bibles and prayer books and presents the local publishing and binding history tied to the J. Steinbrener firm, which at its height employed roughly 1,000 workers and maintained branches in more than sixty countries. The site stands along the line of the old Roman road from Altheim to Passau, in the Katzenberg quarter of the municipality of Kirchdorf am Inn.