To be privately owned
CastlePaternion
Paternion Castle
Paternion Castle is a former manorial seat in Paternion in the lower Drau valley in Carinthia. It was the seat of the Paternion lordship; today, the 34705!listed building complex is owned by the Foscari-Widmann-Rezzonico family and houses the family's forestry and estate administration.
From 1309 onwards, a property "sand Paternian" appears in Ortenburg documents, suggesting the existence of a knightly residence here even at that time. The existence of a castle in Paternion is documented for the year 1354, but a lordship of Paternion is only first mentioned in 1523. It was created by the merger of the Stockenboi and Feistritz offices. Having passed into the possession of the Habsburgs from the Gorizia family through the Peace of Pusarnitz, these territories went to Sigmund von Dietrichstein in 1517/1518 for a sum of 10,000 guilders, and thus to the Dietrichstein family, who operated silver, lead, and iron mines in the surrounding area. Sigmund built a large castle, a complex consisting of four wings, in the center of his possessions.
Sigmund's son, Sigmund Georg, mortgaged Paternion in 1582 to his administrator Salomon Zeidler from Bautzen and in 1587 to Moriz Christof Khevenhüller von Aichelberg. The latter finally bought the lordship from him in 1592 and further expanded the castle. When the Khevenhüller family had to emigrate from Carinthia in 1629 during the Counter-Reformation, they sold the estate to the Villach citizen and Venetian merchant Martin Widmann. The Widmanns were elevated to the rank of counts and barons in 1640 and called themselves Counts of Ortenburg.
Most of the castle complex, which originated in the course of the 16th century, was destroyed by a fire in 1859; only the west wing remained. Countess Elisabeth Maria Adrienne Widmann inherited the estate in 1878 as the last representative of the Widmann family; she married the Venetian Count Piero Foscari. In 1897/1898, the castle was partially rebuilt, albeit in the historicist style common at the time. In particular, the eastern wings were largely rebuilt, while the western parts were partially preserved.
The estate remains in the possession of the Foscari-Widmann-Rezzonico family to this day.
Description+
The elongated castle complex is located on a hill south of the center of Paternion. The building complex consists of several wings that surround a large rectangular courtyard on three sides. The oldest part, the west wing, which was spared from the great fire of 1859, is two-story and covered with a hip roof. At its north corner is an entrance through a round-arched rusticated portal, both inside and out. The northeastern outer wall of the residential block is adorned with an alliance coat of arms of the Dietrichstein family with the year 1558; another Widmann coat of arms (dated 1629) is located on the courtyard side above the portal. On the ground floor of the building are several vaulted rooms, including the castle chapel. To the west, an economic wing, presumably built around 1629, adjoins. The stately residential area consists of the two L-shaped wings in the south of the complex. The three-story buildings were presumably erected in the 17th century and significantly altered in the 19th century. The southeastern entrance is a Renaissance portal made of red stone. Above it, in stone roundels, are the coats of arms of the Foscari-Widmann-Rezzonico family. Roman-era tombstones and medieval spolia from Italy are affixed to the facade. Slightly set forward from the entrance wing is an annex with a 16th-century portal, above which the Lion of Saint Mark is immured.
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Source: Wikipedia · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paternion_-_Schloss.JPG
This description draws on the facts documented in the linked Wikipedia article; Wikipedia content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Wording and editing: Mobile History.
Location: 46.7117, 13.6368