Italy · Restored
Reifenstein Castle
Castel Reifenstein o Tasso
Reifenstein Castle (Burg Reifenstein / Castel Tasso) is a medieval castle above the Eisack valley near Sterzing in South Tyrol, Italy. The site preserves multiple medieval interiors including the painted Green Hall, a woodcarved chapel door, original kitchen and sleeping bunks, and a collection of armor, and remains in the hands of the Thurn und Taxis family.
First raised
1110
Its prime
1350
Today
Restored
As it stood in 1350
What Reifenstein Castle looked like in its prime.
Perched on a rocky wooded spur in the Eisack valley near a dried marsh, the castle is a compact complex of pale plastered and masonry ranges surrounded by a crenellated curtain wall. A squat, square keep with thick stone walls and a steep pyramidal/hipped roof dominates the silhouette, with lower pitched roofs on the domestic ranges. Small rectangular windows and narrow slit openings puncture the walls; conifer forest rises on the slopes behind.
Its story
The story of Reifenstein Castle.
Lechsgemünd, Stilfes and Trautson, 1110–1190
Reifenstein first appears in written documents about 1110, as a fief of the Bavarian counts of Lechsgemünd. It stands on a hill at the southern mouth of the Vipiteno basin, above a plain reclaimed from the marsh known as the Sterzinger Moos, with Castel Sprechenstein facing it from the far side of the valley. From 1140 the stronghold was given to the lords of Stilfes, and when that line died out around 1189/90 it passed to the Trautson.
The Säben Lords and the Teutonic Order's Purchase of 1470
The castle was modified in the fourteenth century. In the centuries after the Trautson inheritance a succession of counts and nobles lived in it, until in 1405 the property passed to the lords of Sabiona, or Säben. After that family was extinguished in turn, Reifenstein became a possession of Duke Sigismund of Austria, who sold it in 1470 to the Teutonic Order, to whom much of the castle's present appearance and its furnishings are owed.
The Thurn und Taxis Counts, 1813 to the Present
Since 1813 the castle has belonged to the counts of Thurn und Taxis of Regensburg, who remain its owners. The Italian name Castel Tasso is taken from theirs and came into use from the 1930s. Because Reifenstein was never conquered or sacked, a great deal of medieval work survives inside it: a thirteenth-century kitchen with an open hearth, the old residential tower, a prison pit five metres deep, and the painted Grüner Saal, the Green Hall, in whose green ornament several figures are hidden.
In 1996 eight Bavarian wooden coffins of the Baumsarg type, dated to the fourth and eighth centuries, were found by the small chapel of San Zeno inside the castle. Two of them are displayed in one of the castle's rooms; the other six, with human remains still inside, are held in the South Tyrol Archaeological Museum. The castle is a protected cultural heritage monument, and about ten of its rooms are shown on guided tours run from Easter to the beginning of November.
Step inside
11 places to explore in 1350.
The record describes 11 distinct spots at Reifenstein Castle, including 7 interiors: green hall (decorated hall), woodcarved chapel door, stubes (wood-paneled living rooms) and more. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
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Clans who held Reifenstein Castle.
The families that held Reifenstein Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Thurn und Taxis
Property of the Thurn und Taxis counts, who have remained its owners to the present.
