Schloss Kaps: A Historic Castle Estate in Austria
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Austria
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Austria-Hungary, Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page8 sections
History
Schloss Kaps, also known as Kapsburg, is a historic castle estate in Kitzbühel, Austria. The Kaps estate was first mentioned in the fourteenth century, while the castle was probably erected in the sixteenth century. The Tyrolean Art Register places its construction at around 1500, and the building was first documented in 1615. The complex is legally protected as a listed monument.
Aristocratic Ownership
In 1627, the estate passed to the Counts of Wolkenstein-Trostburg, members of the Central European comital aristocracy. The Counts of Lamberg acquired it in 1679 and commissioned alterations three years later. These changes contributed to the later form of the complex, including tower-like additions to its rectangular core building.
Later Use
From the early twentieth century, Kapsburg served as a guesthouse. Schloss Kaps also became associated with a 1966 television documentary about the actress Romy Schneider, which was filmed partly around the castle.
Remains
The surviving complex is organized around a rectangular main building that was enlarged with tower-like additions toward the end of the seventeenth century. Nineteenth-century buildings and a freestanding chapel were added nearby, while a passage connected one of the later structures to the castle. The remains combine the earlier castle fabric with ornamental interiors and later historicist construction.
Main Castle
The ground floor of the main building contains a hall covered by a barrel vault, a continuous semicircular ceiling, and a room with its original beam ceiling. On the upper floor, stucco ceilings from the late seventeenth century survive. Portraits of members of the Lamberg family remain inside, and a white-marble Lamberg coat of arms is set above the main portal, whose opening has a flat arch.
Nineteenth-Century Additions
Maps
The sister building called Maps was constructed in 1880–1881 and connected to the castle by a passage. An associated utility building was erected during the same period.
Castle Chapel
A freestanding chapel dedicated to Saint Anne was built around 1881–1885. Its Neo-Gothic design belongs to the nineteenth-century revival of medieval Gothic forms. The chapel contains an altar dating from 1580. Saint Anne is traditionally regarded in Christianity as the mother of the Virgin Mary.
