Tanzenberg Castle

Tanzenberg Castle is located in the municipality of Sankt Veit an der Glan in Carinthia, Austria. The listed castle complex, which emerged from a medieval fortress, is now used as a school building.

The castle was first mentioned in 1247. The brothers Siegmund and Wolfgang von Keutschach began construction of the current castle complex in 1515. The castle, laid out in four wings around a rectangular courtyard, is one of the most important Renaissance complexes in Austria.

In the 19th century, the buildings fell into disrepair. As early as 1802, its most significant work of art, a hexagonal fountain monument whose relief panels masterfully depict scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, had been removed from the arcaded courtyard and moved to the main square of Friesach, where it still stands today. In 1891, Georg von Gutmannsthal acquired the castle, and from 1898, reconstruction and rebuilding took place. The two lower floors correspond to the building fabric from the 16th century. In the northeast wing, parts of the medieval castle have been preserved. On the first and second floors, the courtyard is surrounded by Renaissance arcades. When the castle was acquired by the Olivetans as a monastery in 1898, a church was built there in 1898 instead of the ballroom on the southwest flank, featuring frescoes by Valentin Oman depicting the Way of the Cross of Jesus Christ.

From 1942 until the end of the war, Tanzenberg served as a storage location for the holdings of the Central Library of the "Hohe Schule" of the NSDAP. At the end of World War II, the monastery became the property of the Gurk Ordinariate.