Burgruine Reinegg

Austria, Austria

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Burgruine Reinegg is a ruined medieval hill castle in Carinthia, Austria, located on a steep rocky spur above the village of Reinegg in the municipality of Brückl, close to the Sannthal and the historic route toward the Karawanken.

The site was originally an early refuge or “Fluchtburg” and later adapted into a regional controlling height and cave castle, with its first documentary mention in 1176 as Castrum Rinecke, and it was successively held by the Knights of Osterwitz, the Khünburg, the Silberberg, the Schenken of Osterwitz, and later the Ehrendorfer and Rauber families, becoming a “Schloss und Burgstall” by the late 15th century, indicating that the main residence had moved to a lower castle while the upper fortress had already fallen into decay.

Today the ruins consist of fragmented walls and earthworks on the steep rock, are freely accessible to visitors via a marked path from a small parking area near the bridge outside Brückl, and offer a quiet, somewhat remote monument in the landscape rather than a major tourist castle, while the name “Reinegg” is also associated with other sites such as a small castle ruin on a peninsula in the Dobra reservoir in Lower Austria and a well-preserved medieval castle in the Sarntal (Südtirol), but the Carinthian Burgruine Reinegg is the one most commonly referenced under that exact name.