Schloss Seggau is located on a wooded hill overlooking the town of Leibnitz. The area around Schloss Seggau has been settled since at least the Roman era, as demonstrated by the impressive lapidarium which has survived from that period. The upper castle was built by the Archbishopric of Salzburg in the twelfth century as a base for missions and supervision and this original structure was expanded in 1218 by the bishops of Seckau. Over time, a total of three castles were built: Burg Leibnitz (belonging to the Archbishopric of Salzburg), the castle of the bishops of Seckau, and Schloss Polheim. The castles were completed in their present form under Bishop Johann Ernst, Count of Thun, in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Schloss Seggau was the residence of the bishops until 1786, after which it remained their summer residence until into the twentieth century.
Schloss Seggau now serves as a site for seminars and conferences with a hotel and a Schloss Cafe. The wine cellar is over three hundred years old and offers the opportunity for wine tastings and sales.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.