Strehla Castle
Description
The hill fort on the site of current Strehla castle was built to protect a river crossing near a ford after 928 AD. It was burned down in 1002 in a conflict between the German King Heinrich II and the Polish Duke Bolesław I Chrobry. In 1384 the castle came as a fief to the Lords von Pflugk, who came from Bohemia, and remained in the possession of the Pflugk family until 1945. After the expropriation of the Pflugk family, Strehla Castle was used, among other things, as a children's home and after the reunification as an artist's residence and has been privately owned since 1994.
The oldest part of the building dates from 1335, the knight's hall between the two mighty towers, which has been preserved as a ruin. The lower parts date from the 13th to 14th centuries, the late Gothic cell vaults in the upper floor rooms date from around 1530, the gable attachments and roof turrets were added towards the end of the 16th century. In the 15th to 16th centuries the castle was rebuilt as a palace and the north wing was rebuilt in 1890 after a fire. The gatehouse to the front courtyard was built around 1560 and adorned with dwarf houses and gables. The castle forms a closed square with architectural forms from the late Gothic periodand Renaissance , the Elbe-sided wing, built around 1530 for Otto Pflugk, has a late Gothic brick gable with tracery patterns, the stair towers in the castle courtyard have Renaissance gables. The cell-vaulted 'drinking room' in the south-west tower was given a rich painting in 1532, which is attributed to the circle around Lucas Cranach.
The castle is surrounded by an extensive English landscape park with partly old trees, which stretches down the mountainside to the Elbe.