Maribor Castle, Maribor, Slovenia

Maribor castle, which boasts several constructional and style periods, was built by Emperor Friderik III between the years 1478 and 1483 for the purpose of fortifying the north eastern part of the town wall. The castle was in the course of time changed into a rich feudal residence.

The main room in the castle is the Festive Hall. The hall has rich interior furnishings with pictures of the artistic Quadri family and Laurenzo Laurigo. On the oval ceiling there is the picture of a battle between Christian and Turkish soldiers, which was painted by Johann Gebler from Graz in 1763.

The Baroque stairway was built between 1747 and 1759 and the Loretto chapel between 1665 and 1675.

References:

slovenia.info

User Reviews

Atakan Bayrak (11 months ago)
It is very peaceful place for sit around and drink some coffee with your friends and your family. Such a great castle and center for having fun.

Elena “Tzukino14” Vasilyeva (12 months ago)
Very nice place, it's huge, has a lot of things to see. Also staff are very nice and friendly :)

Uroš Švikart (12 months ago)
Great place with lots of beautiful cafés in the area. Great coffees, pastries and multicultural food choices.

Borut B (13 months ago)
Maribor is a small place that offers plenty of interesting stories and focus, which significantly affects the vitality of the city. With the renovation, the court building was given a new meaning and new content.

Juljan Desmet (14 months ago)
What a value for money! 5 euros (3 for students) for what I expected to be a small exhibition. It is a large museum offering a variety of collections (from the middle ages to paintings to statues) and the building itself is also nice inside and out. It is worth a visit.

Featured Historic Landmarks, Sites & Buildings

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Broch of Gurness

The Broch of Gurness is an Iron Age broch village. Settlement here began sometime between 500 and 200 BC. At the centre of the settlement is a stone tower or broch, which once probably reached a height of around 10 metres. Its interior is divided into sections by upright slabs. The tower features two skins of drystone walls, with stone-floored galleries in between. These are accessed by steps. Stone ledges suggest that there was once an upper storey with a timber floor. The roof would have been thatched, surrounded by a wall walk linked by stairs to the ground floor. The broch features two hearths and a subterranean stone cistern with steps leading down into it. It is thought to have some religious significance, relating to an Iron Age cult of the underground.

The remains of the central tower are up to 3.6 metres high, and the stone walls are up to 4.1 metres thick. The tower was likely inhabited by the principal family or clan of the area but also served as a last resort for the village in case of an attack.

The broch continued to be inhabited while it began to collapse and the original structures were altered. The cistern was filled in and the interior was repartitioned. The ruin visible today reflects this secondary phase of the broch's use.

The site is surrounded by three ditches cut out of the rock with stone ramparts, encircling an area of around 45 metres diameter. The remains of numerous small stone dwellings with small yards and sheds can be found between the inner ditch and the tower. These were built after the tower, but were a part of the settlement's initial conception. A 'main street' connects the outer entrance to the broch. The settlement is the best-preserved of all broch villages.

Pieces of a Roman amphora dating to before 60 AD were found here, lending weight to the record that a 'King of Orkney' submitted to Emperor Claudius at Colchester in 43 AD.

At some point after 100 AD the broch was abandoned and the ditches filled in. It is thought that settlement at the broch continued into the 5th century AD, the period known as Pictish times. By that time the broch was not used anymore and some of its stones were reused to build smaller dwellings on top of the earlier buildings. Until about the 8th century, the site was just a single farmstead.

In the 9th century, a Norse woman was buried at the site in a stone-lined grave with two bronze brooches and a sickle and knife made from iron. Other finds suggest that Norse men were buried here too.

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