Burg Saldenburg

The Saldenburg stands on a hilltop in Niederbayern, a five-storey stone tower topped with a pointed roof that the locals call the ‘forest lantern’. It overlooks wide valleys and marks the edge of the Dreiburgenland where three old castles stand within sight of one another. The building began as a medieval fortress in 1368 and was later reshaped into a Baroque schloss, though its core walls remain from the 14th century. The fortress once guarded a trade road to Bohemia and changed hands among knights, dukes and counts through the centuries. In 1682 the Preysing family hired the architect Enrico Zuccalli to redesign the interior, adding a chapel and painted ceilings. During the Second World War the Nazis used the castle as part of the Lebensborn programme, removing nearly two hundred Slovenian children from their families. Visitors enter over a wooden bridge across a dry ditch and walk into a courtyard ringed by crumbling curtain walls. Inside, the ground floor holds the kitchen and pantry, while the first floor’s former knights’ hall now serves meals beneath a ceiling fresco of a Roman triumph. The second floor’s Gothic hall has a ribbed vault, and the Baroque chapel above it is dedicated to the Three Kings, its ceiling showing Christ’s circumcision and its altarpiece the adoration of the Magi.