Slovenia · Restored
Predjama Castle
Grad Predjama
Predjama Castle is a Renaissance castle built directly into the mouth of a large limestone cave in Inner Carniola, Slovenia. The multi-storey, plastered stone building is pressed against a vertical cliff face and has remained in much the same form since its reconstruction in the 16th century; today it functions as a preserved historic site and museum.
Its prime
1570
Today
Restored
As it stood in 1570
What Predjama Castle looked like in its prime.
A pale, plastered multi-storey Renaissance house of stone set flush against a vertical limestone cliff and beneath a large cave mouth; small square and rectangular windows puncture the façades, some with distinctive black-and-white diagonal shutters. A round corner tower with a band of corbels (machicolation-like projection) rises on the right, while steep, hipped slate roofs cap the blocks. The castle sits on a rocky outcrop with an arched entrance tucked into the left-hand wall below the cave opening.
Its story
The story of Predjama Castle.
Luegg Beneath the Rock Arch, 1274
The castle first appears in 1274 under the German name Luegg, built in Gothic style by the patriarchs of Aquileia. They set it under a natural rock arch high in the cliff face, which made the approach hard to force. The Luegg family, also called the Knights of Adelsberg after the German name for Postojna, later took it over and enlarged it.
Erasmus of Lueg Against Frederick III
The castle became known as the seat of the fifteenth-century knight Erasmus of Lueg, a renowned robber baron and son of Nikolaj Lueger, the imperial governor of Trieste. Legend has it that he fell out with the Habsburgs by killing Marshal Pappenheim, commander of the imperial army, who had slighted the honour of his dead friend, the condottiere Andrej Baumkircher of Vipava. Fleeing the vengeance of Frederick III, Erasmus reached the family fortress, allied himself with Matthias Corvinus and raided Habsburg estates and towns across Carniola, until the emperor charged the governor of Trieste with taking or killing him.
The siege ran long, but hunger did not decide it: a vertical natural shaft out of the old castle, which Erasmus had ordered enlarged, surfaced at the top of the cliff twenty-five metres back from the edge, and by it he kept the place supplied and went on with his robberies. He was killed all the same. Slovene tradition dates his death to 1484 and puts it down to treachery, a bribed man setting a candle in the window of his chamber to guide the gunners; the popular story that a cannon shot caught him in his lavatory is dismissed as unfounded, the front wing containing it being no part of the castle then.
From the Purgstalls to the Partisan Press
The ruins passed to the Oberburg family and then to the Purgstalls, whose castle of the first decade of the sixteenth century was destroyed by an earthquake in 1511. Archduke Charles leased Predjama to Baron Cobenzl in 1567, who paid it off twenty years later; by 1570 the present Renaissance building stood pressed against the vertical cliff beneath the old fortification, scarcely changed since. From 1846 the castle belonged to the Windischgrätz family.
During the Second World War the castle held a Partisan court and printing press, and on 30 August 1944 the Jesenice-Bohinj Detachment was formed there from units of the 31st Division, which operated in Upper Carniola until the end of the war. At the war's end the Yugoslav communist authorities confiscated and nationalised it, and the castle became a museum.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 1570.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Predjama Castle, including 2 interiors: secret vertical shaft (hidden passage), lavatory (legendary site). Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
Build Your Own Castle
Recreate Predjama Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1570, a photoreal reconstruction that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
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Clans who held Predjama Castle.
The families that held Predjama Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Cobenzl
Leased to Baron Philipp von Cobenzl in 1567; a favourite Cobenzl summer residence thereafter.
