Schloss Wernberg

Schloss Wernberg stands on a rock above a loop of the Drau east of Villach in Carinthia. Built largely in the Renaissance style, it has three wings arranged around a courtyard with two-storey arcades. The arcades are partly walled up today, and the southern side is closed by a breast wall carried on twelve corbelled arches. Four massive corner towers rise above the main front, and the northwest tower links to the castle church.

The castle’s north gate from 1575 is framed by diamond-quarried rustication and topped by a triangular pediment bearing the coat of arms of Georg Khevenhüller, its builder. Above the gate a carved relief shows Khevenhüller and his two wives in stiff, stylised poses with pronounced eyes and hair arranged in decorative patterns. The inner courtyard holds a stone water trough dated about 1575 and fragments of 17th-century frescoes above the doors. The southeast wing was rebuilt in 1969–71 after the original was demolished in 1963.

The castle church, dedicated to the Precious Blood, has a richly stuccoed façade and a four-bay barrel-vaulted nave with an added second gallery from 1964. Its ceiling and walls are decorated by Josef Ferdinand Fromiller with illusionistic architecture and scenes including the Assumption of Mary and figures of the four Church Fathers and four Evangelists. The high altar is painted to resemble marble and stone, flanked by painted statues of Saints Benedict and Scholastika in ochre-brown tones.