Burgruine Greifenfels

Ebenthal, Austria, Austria

---

Burgruine Greifenfels is a medieval hill castle ruin on a rocky summit in the Sattnitz hills near Ebenthal in Carinthia, Austria, situated between the towns of Ebenthal and Gurnitz and offering views over the Klagenfurt Basin.

The castle was built around 1230–1231 by Wulfing and Heinrich von Gurnitz, who received permission from Pope Gregory IX to construct a fortress on land belonging to the Kloster Viktring, and its name “Greifenfels” (literally “Grip Rock”) comes from Heinrich’s later renaming to “Heinrich von Greifenfels” after taking possession of the site.

Over the centuries the castle passed to the Auffensteiner family in 1315, then to the lords of Neuhaus around 1404/1408, and after they completed the lower Schloss Ebenthal in 1566 they abandoned Greifenfels in 1588, leaving it to gradually decay into the ruin seen today. Since 1704 the ruin has been in the possession of the noble Goëss family, and despite its very poor state of preservation the site remains protected as a historic monument.

Only small fragments of the original structure survive: the irregular ring wall, which follows the shape of the rock and encloses an area of roughly 35 by 20 meters, and a few building remains, including a small room at the northeast corner with a stone drainage outlet that is interpreted as part of an old kitchen.