Alte Ennsburg

The Alte Ennsburg once stood on the Georgenberg in the town of Enns, in Upper Austria’s Linz-Land district. The hilltop site overlooks the steep drop to the Enns river and is now a small viewing platform. Nearby lies Schloss Ennsegg, whose 16th-century walls still show traces of the older fortress. The hill was first a Celtic settlement, then a Roman temple district before a medieval stronghold was built to guard against Magyar and Avar raids. In 901 it was called ‘Anesapurch’, later passing from the Bishop of Passau to Duke Henry of Bavaria and then to the Ottokar family. A crucial treaty, the Georgenberger Handfeste, was sealed here in 1186, transferring Styria to the Babenbergs. The Habsburgs later pledged the crumbling ruin to several nobles until it was finally abandoned in the late 15th century. Today only grassy slopes mark the former walls, but the site offers wide views over the Enns valley. A late-medieval church once stood nearby, its stones reused in the Thirty Years War and later as building material for Schloss Ennsegg. Visitors walk a quiet path beside the park’s edge, where the old tower mound still bears the name ‘Aussichtshügel der Romantik’.