Ruine Weissenegg

Ruden, Austria, Austria

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Ruine Weissenegg (also written Burg Weißenegg) is a partially ruined medieval castle standing on a wooded rock spur above the Griffen valley, northeast of the town of Ruden in Carinthia, Austria.

Built in the first half of the 12th century, it originally functioned as a twin castle complex, with an older round tower from the 13th century and a later main castle laid out in a rectangular plan and raised in the 16th century, surrounded by a large outer courtyard that once formed a horseshoe-shaped enclosure around the inner buildings.

The castle was the ancestral seat of the noble Weißenegger family, an important Carinthian dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries that produced several bishops and served in military roles, and from about 1300 the site also acted as the seat of a local land court that included Ruden. Over the centuries the castle changed hands several times, passing to the Walsee family, then to the Cilli counts, and finally to the Bishopric of Bamberg, which held it until 1759 when the bishopric sold its Carinthian estates to the Austrian state; by that time the castle was already abandoned and in decline.