Burg Plankenstein

Plankenstein, Austria, Austria

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Burg Plankenstein is a hill castle in the municipality of Texing in Lower Austria, about 20 kilometers west of Vienna, perched on a rocky spur at roughly 657 meters above sea level and first mentioned in documents in 1186 as the seat of the Plankenstein family, who were ministeriales (knights bound to noble lords) of the Peilstein and later Schaunberg counts.

The original medieval fortress was repeatedly damaged and rebuilt; in 1453 Pankraz von Plankenstein renewed the already dilapidated castle, and in the 16th century the Rauber and later the Windischgrätz families transformed it into a Renaissance palace, while in 1683 Turkish forces besieged the castle and heavily damaged it with cannon fire before it was rescued by imperial dragoons.

After long periods of private ownership by families such as the Tinti and Nagl‑Dvornik, the castle was sold in 1975 to the architect Peter Trimbacher, who undertook extensive restoration to turn the ruin into a usable residential and cultural building, and in 2010 the Wiener entrepreneur Erich Podstatny bought the property and continued renovation work, preserving much of the historic substance while making it functional for modern use.