Schloss Greillenstein

Schloss Greillenstein is a Renaissance palace in the village of Greillenstein, part of the municipality of Röhrenbach in Lower Austria. It stands on the site of a small medieval fortress first mentioned in 1313 and rebuilt in the 16th century. The present four-winged building was erected between 1570 and 1590 for Hans Georg III von Kuefstein by an Italian master builder. The palace served as an administrative centre for three large estates and as a summer residence for the Protestant Kuefstein family. The palace is notable for its largely original furnishings and its role in regional history. During the Thirty Years War it was occupied by imperial troops and used for strategy meetings before the Battle of White Mountain. In 1809 more than a thousand French soldiers were billeted here, leaving the interior devastated. The chapel in the south tower still shows its Renaissance fittings unique in the Waldviertel. Portraits of Sultan Murad IV hang in the Turkish Hall in the north wing. Visitors enter across a bridge adorned with baroque stone figures over a dry moat. The inner courtyard contains baroque vases designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. The west wing houses the grand ballroom, while the former courtroom retains medieval court records and the only surviving court barrier in Austria. Beyond the palace lies an English landscape garden laid out in the 17th and 18th centuries, once part of a 47-hectare deer park with a baroque water feature and sandstone dragon. Nearby in Röhrenbach stands the Kuefstein family crypt chapel, decorated with a fresco by Paul Troger.