Tarasp Castle

The castle's origin is dated three ways: to 1094 specifically; more vaguely to the tenth century, first documented only in the eleventh; or to the eleventh century itself, with the tenth only a possibility. Its name comes from terra aspera, 'wild earth', perhaps referring to new land in the Inn valley; the family who built it had taken the castle's name by 1089, when Ulrich von Tarasp — who became Bishop of Chur that year — is recorded under it in a papal document. Around the same time the family founded Scuol Monastery, later moved to Marienberg Abbey, to help carve out a barony in the formerly uninhabited high valley. It then consisted of a ring wall and a chapel with a combined bell and watch tower.

In 1160 a member of the family, Ulrich, donated his share of the castle to the Bishop of Chur, but his nephew and co-owner Gerhard, backed by the Count of Tyrol, seized it and drove out the bishop's men in 1163. The bishop and his allies besieged the castle and forced a compromise: it became the bishop's property, held by Gerhard and his heirs as a fief that would revert to the bishop if the line failed. Gerhard died violently in 1170; the family's last male heir entered Marienberg Abbey childless in 1177, ending the Tarasp line. The castle passed to the bishop, while the Matsch family — the founders' relatives — inherited the abbey.

In 1200 the bishop installed the Reichenberg family as his vogts at Tarasp, but in 1239 Swiker von Reichenberg, ignoring the bishop's claim, sold the castle to Count Albert of Tyrol. From 1273 the House of Matsch held Tarasp as vassals of Tyrol, becoming Habsburg vassals once Austria inherited Tyrol. Frederick VII of Toggenburg inherited the castle in 1422 through his wife Elisabeth von Matsch; on his death in 1436 it returned to the Matsch family. In 1464 Ulrich IX von Matsch sold Tarasp to Sigmund of Austria, a sale that triggered an uprising in the Lower Engadine.

Austria kept control of the region, but relations with the local population stayed tense, and worsened once the Reformation took hold in the Engadine. Protestant locals attacked and tried to seize the castle in 1548 and again in 1578; despite additional fortification, they stormed and burned it in 1612. A lightning strike set it on fire again in 1625 and killed the daughter of the Austrian representative living there. In 1687 Emperor Leopold I granted the lordship and castle to the Austrian House of Dietrichstein as an immediate territory of the Holy Roman Empire. After the French invasion of Switzerland and the creation of the Helvetic Republic, the castle was taken from Austria in 1803 and, under the Act of Mediation, incorporated into the Canton of Graubünden; after about 1815 it was abandoned and rapidly fell into ruin.

The canton considered turning the derelict castle into a prison before abandoning the idea as too costly and selling it in 1829, for under 5,000 francs, to Landammann Men Marchi of Scuol. It passed through several owners over the following decades — plundered and neglected — until the politician Andreas Rudolf von Planta-Samedan bought it in 1856, began repairs and replaced the damaged roof. His son sold it in 1900, still close to ruin, to the Dresden industrialist Karl August Lingner, inventor of Odol mouthwash, who had discovered the castle during a stay at the nearby spa of Tarasp-Vulpera. Lingner restored the castle over the following decade, installing a concert organ in the old armoury, but died on 5 June 1916 without ever having lived in it.

His will left the castle to King Frederick Augustus III, who declined the inheritance because it required him to reside there part of each year; it passed instead to Grand Duke Ernest Louis of Hesse, and was opened as a museum in 1919.

The castle remained with the House of Hesse, passing eventually to Ernest Louis's childless son, until the family announced its wish to sell it in 2004. The municipality of Tarasp agreed in 2008 to investigate buying it, and the Fundaziun Chastè da Tarasp was created in 2010 to raise funds for the purchase; when the foundation could not raise enough, the Swiss artist Not Vital stepped in, announcing his intention to buy the castle in 2015 and completing the purchase for CHF 7.9 million in March 2016. Tarasp Castle is listed as a class A Swiss cultural property of national significance and stands in the municipality of Scuol, into which the former commune of Tarasp was absorbed in 2015.