Celje Castle

It stands on three hills to the southeast of Celje, where the river Savinja meanders into the Laško valley.

The first fortified building on the site (a Romanesque palace) was built in the first half of the 13th century by the Counts of Heunburg from Carinthia on the stony outcrop on the western side of the ridge where the castle stands.

They gave the castle a new curtain wall and reinforced this with a tower on the northern side, which guarded the entrance to the inner ward, sometime before 1300.

On the eastern side of the courtyard, there was a tall, three-story residential tower, which is the best preserved section of the castle after Friderikov stolp.

The main residential building (a palatium), which also had rooms for women, stood however in the western section of the castle.

The Counts of Celje stopped living in the castle in this period, but they stationed a castellan with an armed entourage here.

In the 15th century, the outer ward was extended on the eastern side of the ridge as far as the rocky outcrop.

Landau obtained the position from Emperor Maximilian I, who was at the time still the King of the Romans, for having lent him 10,000 crowns.

Two years later, Bernard Raunacher briefly held this position, but the emperor ordered him to hand authority to Gašper Herbst and to make do with the income generated by Rudolfswert (later Novo Mesto).

From the ruins that remain and from depictions of the castle that have survived, it is possible to paint a detailed picture of how it once looked.

Georg Matthäus Vischer’s depiction of the castle from 1681 shows that Friderikov stolp no longer had a roof at the end of the 17th century.

From this time onward, it was no longer possible to live in the castle, and it slowly turned into a complete ruin.

In 1846, the governor of the Styria, Count Wickenburg, bought the ruins and donated them to the Styrian estates.

During the time of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the authorities in Maribor left control over the ruins to the local municipality, which made great contributions to the castle's preservation.

[citation needed] From 1972 Tatjana Bregant led archaeological excavations at the Old Castle site.

The Veronikini večeri event has been taking place since 1996 and the Veronikina nagrada has equally been awarded since then.